Research books experiment

[Mroz4k]

Hello, fellow survivors!

So, as a part of a laid-back longterm game, I decided to try and achieve a pretty tedious task as soon as possible - in the first 50 days of the game, I looted most of the entire island, taking only basic of supplies, and attempting to locate all the research books I could. I took notes as to where I found them, in hopes this information would be of use to the rest of you. You will find my notes on locations in screenshots attached to the post. There are other locations I know of, I will eventually try to make a full list of all the locations that I can possibly remember - if you would like to contribute with your locations of books, feel free! We can create a "list" of possible locations as a community.

This game was custom difficulty mostly close to Voyageur, with the biggest amount of loot possible, so I can pinpoint the highest amount of spawnpoints of books.
I probably missed a few books still - regardless, my current library amounts to:
(Sewing) A sewing primer - 3 x
(Carcass harvesting) Field dressing your kill, vol. 1 - 5 x
(Rifles - big) Advanced guns guns guns! - 4 x
(Rifles - small) Frontier shooting guide - 4 x
(Archery) Stay on target - 6 x
(Firestarting) Survive outdoors! - 6 x
(Fishing) The frozen angler - 3 x
(Cooking) Wilderness kitchen - 7 x

(I believe I am missing a wilderness kitchen or frozen angler book somewhere from Mountain Town. Despite its size as a region, I found only a single book in there and I know that Milton House where Graymother used to live occasionally spawns a Wilderness kitchen book. It is probably somewhere in the houses in the town, which I havent looted yet.)

The reason I did this was to try and maximalize the effect of these books as early as possible, so that I am not "wasting" resources on poor skills or mistakes. 

My current skills are at: 

This includes approximatedly 35 arrow hits at various animals, 47 kg of meat harvested of the animals plus 1 bear hide, 4 deer skins and cca 8 guts. 45 kg of meat cooked, and at least 25 cans of food heated towards cooking skill. I have no idea how many campfires I have made succesfully but it will be around 30.  I succesfully repaired clothes about 10 times. I didnt exactly keep a proper track of these things as initially I was only interested in finding the spawn locations. Still, as can be seen - most of the skills can easily be reached to level 4 with mostly the use of the books.

I also have to mention that I have not yet used the Advanced Guns guns guns! books because I am still hoping to find at least one more Frontier book somewhere, probably Mountain town.

Here are the things I learned: 
-For the skills you use the most in the game - cooking, harvesting carcasses, firestarting, sewing, possibly even archery - it is best to use these books ASAP. Higher skill in these tasks means you waste less resources early on when your skills are low. Rifles are not neccesary unless you use rifle often - I reccomend patience there as Frontier books become unusable after level 3. 

-The connector locations often have a book or two in them. I have not expected that initially. I am very glad I decided to check these locations thoroughly, too. 

-Hushed River Valley is a problem for locations of the books - half of the research books found in this region spawn regularly inside of supply caches, which have pre-set contents, but somewhat random location spawns. One has to search for these specific supply caches if they want to get these books. The cache sets that I know contain books so far: Frontier shooting guide - in a cache hidden on top of Monolith lake plateau. Wilderness kitchen - in a cache that spawns somewhere in the bottom part of the map - the landslide/moose overlook area. I found it once in a cache in the middle of that bottom part of the map, and once in a cache which is in between the two rope climbs from Landslide area to Pensive vista (monolith lake area of the map).

-There can be more then 1 book of that particular type in the region.

-I have a theory there are 3 types of books - the "big books", the "medium books" and the "small books". When the game is spawned, the location determines what kind of a book spawns there. If the place spawns "big books" - it will be Advanced guns or Sewing primer. If it is "medium" it will be Survive outdoors, stay on target or Field dressing your kill. If it is "small", it will be wilderness kitchen, Frontier shooting guide or Frozen angler. 

-Additionally, the spawn points seem to favor 1 of 2 possible types of books spawning there - meaning that you wont find a wilderness kitchen inside a fishing hut, but it will be either Frontier shooting guide, or frozen angler. While somewhat randomized, the books and their locations usually "make" sense.

-Per each region, there are several "possible spawnpoints" of these books - but only 1 place actually spawns them (it seems). For example, Mountain town has 3 locations of Big books that I am aware of, but only 1 seems to spawn per game - Advanced guns guns guns! can be found at plane crash, in an outdoor cave in the ravine to the left after you cross the "bear" bridge on a way from the plane crash, or at Baker´s farmstead inside. 


In the attached pictures, you will find screenshots of my notes on the locations of these research books - I pointed out all the places that I found new and unusual, most of these are not very descriptive - but should give you general idea. Some of the locations were obvious (and initially, I didnt write them down, which was silly of me cause now I dont remember)