Guide To Long Term Ice Fishing Hut Maintenance

[TheEldritchGod]

https://imgur.com/a/XPWRPmw

Follow the pictures.

1. See that tinder plug on the ice? Always make a trail to your Hut from the shore using tinder plugs.

2. Always pick a hut with a door if you are going to make it your long term fishing hut, both for the warmth bonus, and protection. Arrange two fires like this. You can get it a big closer with practice, and walk in an out over the cooking surfaces, but you have to be REAL careful and the additional wind resistance isn't worth it.

3. This is how your hut should be operating normally. The inner stove is off, only to be used if the cold gets really bad, or you need to keep the flame going and both fires outside are blown out. Look at the smoke. See how it is going straight up?

4. Now see how the one behind the door is straight up, but the one on the right is blowing to the left? If you have the fire next to the door in JUST the right spot, the cooking surfaces are accessible from the doorway, but the door acts as a wind break giving you 180 degree protection from the wind. The other one only has 120 degree protection. So at least one will burn if the wind comes from anywhere in a 250 degree arc.

5. Here we have an example of just that. The wind was enough to blow out one, but the other stayed lit, as you can see by the smoke going straight up.

6. When it is windy, you may have to burn wood that isn't a stick. This will increase your burn time over 9 minutes. When it is "gusty", you can still add fuel, but a gust of wind will drop your fire to 9 minutes. So if you wait until your fire is at 1min left and add a stick, if the wind gusts, you might only lose a few minutes. but if you add reclaimed wood, you can lose a half hour. Pull torches to reduce the burn time by 10 minutes and throw those torches out onto the ice. They serve 2 purposes. One, they go out when the wind starts gusting too high. Two, you can harvest them later for sticks, thus turning other forms of wood into sticks. Harvest them when you AREN'T using the fires.

7. Here you see me inside when the wind is too high for cooking with the fires. I keep the cooked meat inside on the left and the fuel on the right. When you have max cooking, if you have a cooking pot, you can cook 1.5 ltrs of water in 1 hour 4 minutes. You can thus nap for an hour and get 1.5 ltrs of water while you are doing it. An efficient use of your time.

8. Keep your bedroll on top of the cabinet for the space. If you have anything special you want to keep out of the way, you can see there is a spot you can put items so they stick out of the drawers. I keep Lure Meat there, as well as tools.

9. On the shelves or in these spaces are a good place to put the water you make so it is out of the way if you make like 50 bottles of water, dump it out on the ice and sort it later.

10. Here you see a good cooking arrangement. I like to have at least one can of water cooking, because you can hit space bar and accelerate time, but at cooking 5, it's only 13 minutes, max. If your fire is at 9 minutes, it won't burn out. Your fire is at 10 hours, you say? Well, while you are accelerating time to cook faster, the wind can gust and reduce that fire from 10 hours to 9 minutes in a heart beat. NEVER ACCELLERATE TIME MORE THEN 13 MINUTE INCREMENTS. Remember, fires burn longer outdoors, so 9 minutes of outdoor fire is actually about 15 minutes. I keep the raw meat piled up outside, so I can right click it onto the cooking surfaces easier.

11. DO NOT USE UP ALL YOUR JERRY CANS. Always save about .1 ltrs of oil in a can. if you use up all the fuel, they vanish from your inventory. However, look at the picture. 4 Ltrs of oil is only 3.3kg. If you use the little bottles of Everflame, they are .5 kg for .5 ltrs of fuel. So save and fill those jerry cans!

12. If you are cooking only the meat, cook different types of meat with different cook times and check them. Only accelerate time on the one that will be finished cooking first. It's okay if they don't all finish at the same time. Staggering your meat cooking time is the next best thing to keeping a can of water boiling for the purpose of controlling time jumps. Just remember, when you accelerate time, you also add about 1-3 minutes of time. So accelerating 13 minutes is actually 14-16 minutes, depending.

And last but not least, have fun. You can power cook food, or power boil water, getting the most bang for your buck while having a place to retreat or grab a torch and transfer the fire to the inside fire place for the long term, if a blizzard starts. Remember that the fires will chase off wolves, but bears can smell food on a fire, so if you hear crows, it might be a bear. Be prepared to close that door and let him have his snack.

Edited July 27, 2019 by TheEldritchGod

[Gooner77]

Great tips, keep it coming.