DMC with Rifle and Tea

[Dalos]

ok, fastforwarding time a bit now. Currently at Day 16, in the winding river transition cave, safe and moderately sound.

I made it to TWM and summited around day 8 again. Decent trip but then rain into blizzard issues on the way back down.

Gear was meh and i totally forgot to pick up the heavy hammer there. I did get a 24% level fire stick, so ok.

 

Made it back to the climbers hut and stayed a few days enough to make rabbit hat and gloves. I had to get out of there bc cabin fever would set in and i didn't have enough cloth for a shelter.

 

[Dalos]

at that point, a plan started to form out of necessity. I had no rifle luck, because of course so i need a ranged weapon. This means bow and arrows. I am not about to climb the mountain again just for a hammer so it was back down through the valley.

stayed one night in the cave by the plane crash, then hoofed it down to the barn (no hammer) and the crossing houses.

Slept in the little cave with the dear on the north side of the map, then on to the radio control hut where i scored another set of combats and even work boots. some rifle ammo too.

but still, i need a forge. It's nice that i don't have to make deer pants because i really don't have the food stuffs to chill in one spot too long.

the plan now is to head through the river, up the dam and then make the journey through Coastal Highway, crumbling high way and then the Rikken forge on desolation point.

i'm about 60% health now. Was down to 40% when i hit the barn but i stupidly went through birch forest where the bear is on PV before getting to the crossing village. didn't see a bear there but i did stumble on my third moose of this game though. Couldn't do a damn thing about it though except back away slowly.

here's the gear.

 

[Dalos]

Day 20 now  - stayed at the dam and made up my deerskin boots. I could have just repaired the workboots but i like have the extra bit of warmth and especially protection from the crafted gear.

Picked up the easy cattails by the river then headed to the ravine.

Ravine was very nice to me. Got a crowbar and another hammer in the train wreck.

more importantly, i picked up enough birch bark to make  about 7 teas.

stayed up all night in the far cave by the bridge making water and tea and rabbit meat.

woke up cold bc my fire went out but not terrible weather so i headed on to the highway.

first stop in, while heading downhill towards the little cabin and the fishing village and i see something wonderful.

and it's 90% condition too. be still my heart.

 

 

[Dalos]

Day 24 now

spent a few nights at the fishing village, but not before i got attacked by a wolf on my way down the hill. Didn't have enough time to even raise my rifle. Kinda sucks when you've been birch tea'ing it every few hours to inch your health  back up, only  to have it drop 20% in one shot.

still, it could have been worse. i fended him off with the heavy hammer. Didn't kill him though.

no use staying here to fish because i am still at Fishing 1, which is a disaster waiting to happen.

decided to head on to the Point.

stayed outdoors in the cave there and going to stay at the church to stave off the fever while i craft. then hopefully, make some arrows and a bow at Hibernia.

 

[Dalos]

bagged first wolf today. MF chased me right into the church. I didn't even have guts on me either.

Felt really good to have some payback for once, even though i had to use one of my 13 bullets.

[Dalos]

Just made it to the ship. bc blizzard.

[Dalos]

Here's a new one. Made it back from the Point, crafted gear in tow. Although i could only make 8 arrowheads because i ran out of forge fuel.

slept a night at the church and then another at the crumbling cave. Avoided wolf damage all the way back to the fishing village carrying a ton of mine coal hoping to make some tackle and get to fishing when i come upon this magic.

[Dalos]

i go to the one of my left, scare the wolf away and light a fire. Then i scare away the one on the right.

i turn back around to dump my coal and stuff away before harvesting and the wolf i scared second decided to bring down the third dear. crazy stuff man.

 

[Dalos]

Chilled on the Highway fishing village eating deer for a while and reading books but i need to get warmer close. I am now approaching the magic 40 day marker so the world is about to get colder.

loaded up on stuff and some skins, time to head up to the dam and then mystery lake. don't really want to stay at the Lake for a while because i need underwear. sadly, on these settings with condition set to crap, i need to find everything i need soon or else it will be not repairable.

 

giving this fatty a wide berth though. weird how he didn't sniff me out because i am carrying some uncured hides on me.

 

[Dalos]

made it to the dam where i thought i had an extra wolf skin cooking but it wasn't there. bad memory i guess. I need one more.

this muther will do.

[Dalos]

shot him right in the butt. what what.

 

[Dalos]

Day 40 ish now. did get the bear hide but no cooking 5 yet so i only cut up a little of his meat.

did some fishing, with mixed results. Got caught in a blizzard in the fishing hut and had to scramble to make it back to my cave. Got lost in the blizzard and of course stumbled down and had this happen. Somehow managed to make it to one of the indoors fishing huts but still lost about 15% health, which took so long to birch bark back to perfect in the first place.

Gonna head on over to Trapper in the hopes of some better luck.

 

[Dalos]

my snare game is strong though.

 

[Dalos]

Day 48 - made it to wolf town fine but then got jumped right by the post office. Gonna need a whole lot more birch bark to get through this. 75% health gone in 5 seconds.

 

[Dalos]

let's fast forward about 10 days. I almost got jumped again heading out of mother's the next day so i escaped into a house and decided i needed a safe place to rest up and lick my wounds. To me this means the cave down in the Milton valley. great spot for wound licking.

got enough birch down there, cattails and even killed a wolf to make it about 4 days. Got my health back up to 60% which is where i am at now.

made my way up to the ranch and stayed a night there and then again at the church. not great gear.

the plan was to head to HRV in search of more birch, but not before i would make a beeline to the bridge in milton to see if the bear is there. I could use warmer clothes bad.

on the way...i see an old friend.

 

[Dalos]

well, that sucked. I outsmarted myself. I see that beauty but i have no way to store 40KG of meat so i start gathering stones. I need some place to store all his stuff while his hide cures. blah blah.

so i duck into the HRV cave and start collecting stones. Got as many as i can and head out, and of course that Moose is gone now.

 

I did a quick pivot and went up to look for the bridge bear and he's there. I rifle him. Nothing. Then i arrow him and stick him real good right in the head. I even got a nice screen shot of me hiding like a coward in one of the bridge cards while he walked on past with my arrow in his neck. Too bad our power went out and i lost it.

anyway, the arrow and the rifle shot did not kill him. I had to come  back one more time and it took another 4 rifle shots to finally kill him.

got his hide and a few KGs of poison bear meat. I also ran a wolf into a deer and got my stone storage thing right in the middle of the road by the frozen pond. But i can't stay here any longer. I am just treading water. On to the HRV.

 

[Stinky socks]

@Dalos, your thread is a prime example of what this game is about. Maximum loneliness. This is depressing😞

Is anyone else reading these posts? Free pretzels for the first five people to post here!!🥨 yum!😋

Back on topic, you'll enjoy HRV, man!! It's got lots of wildlife! And caves! Believe it or not, I found a lot more man-made stuff here than at ash canyon!!

[Dalos]

Thanks!

 

So i caught my first break of the game, feels like. the mysterious signal fire was at the easy location on the left side of the map. Was able to get up there, recover the mackinaw jacket and some other stuff before heading back down.

was going to explore a bit while my bear hired cured back in the mountain town cave but thought better of it. My clothing is only giving me +21 when everything is at 100% and it's just too damn cold to be outside for very long.

 

but...i caught break #2  I made my way back into the milton frozen lake and my sweet moose was back. I climbed up the fallen tree and took my shot. had to chase him up the hill a bit and then down the other side but i got it.

the weather actually held for several hours and i was able to cook up about 25 of his 40 KG and  got his hide.

 

here's the aftermath.

 

[Dalos]

Day 66 now. here's my cave home at the top of the map on Milton. Killed that wolf right before he nipped my nuts.

i even found another birch bark so i could make 1 tea and heal a wee bit.

[fauxjargon]

Amazing progress!  I'm playing a similar gamemode - I use Interloper settings, but with recovery turned off and rifles and revolvers enabled.  I also leave turn down the item decay rate to low so I don't feel I have to hit every loot spot in 40-50 days.

I've noticed a few things - even though Baseline Resource Availability is set to low, non-Interloper items are spawning for me, and loot in some places, like TWM, is much more abundant.  There are more containers scattered and they have Stalker levels of stuff in them.

I enjoy it - it breaks the Interloper and Deadman fixation on the forge, and on runs where I have lived long enough to find a rifle, I've never found too much ammo.  Revolvers seem even rarer, and I don't think I've ever had more than 2 or 3 rounds at any given time.  Given that the rifle and revolver are both inferior to the flare gun as a self defense tool I don't think the  presence of guns makes staying alive too much easier anyway.  There's no question that a rifle will help with moose and bear though

[Dalos]

hah, you are spot on with the fire power helping with moose and bear. bc bullets are so rare though it's still required to make a bow and arrow which is find with me. They call me robin hood in some parts.

Also, since recovery is set to 0% (except birch tea and stims) a wolf attack is absolutely killer. being able to walk around with the rifle in hand and aiming quicker than the bow really helps. Even just one that you survive drops your health down to a level that would take about 10 teas to get back up to 100%. I just found 4 birch barks on a quick trip from my cave to the church and it was like finding a winning lottery ticket. The only thing is, after healing, i dunno maybe 8% from them both, i still lost a little because of the damn cold.

so i do like this setting. The cold is still your biggest enemy. I am damn glad i chose the +2 cold fusion bonus as a perk otherwise i would be a sunken ship.

so instead of carrying my bear and moose skin back with me to a safer spot, i am just going to let the moose hide cure to make my satchel. Other than the rifle that's the one item that will really open up this run for me.

I do see a looming problem on the horizon though. I'm down to 15 bullets now and my rifle condition is dropping. I could find another one but it's condition would probably stink. There are no rifle cleaning kits either.

i know that if i survive long enough i'll have to make it on over to Bleak Inlet to repair it and make some more bullets.

That's a problem for another day though.

for now, i climbed down to the plane wreck in the hopes of finding some loot. I have 3 stims too and i am fighting the urge to use one but to me, those are only break glass in case of emergency type stuff.

now i wait in the cave. It's a crappy cave too. I'll need to keep a fire going all night to survive.

brrrrrrrr.....

 

 

[Dalos]

made it through the night there and chased the wolf away before sprinting down the hill, to the little frozen pond where i arrowed the two rabbits. Slept in the nice cave above town. Even found a gunsmithing book which is cool for when i need it.

now i am at grey mothers. i chopped up some cloth to repair all my clothes. I'll need to make it all the way up to the trailer tomorrow. hopefully the moose hide is cured now but i doubt it. at least i will have food.

honestly, i can't believe i don't have cooking 5 yet. I've made so many teas just to keep warm.

one thing that is "fun" about this setting is my gave of food poisoning roulette.

what's that...18% condition dog food? sure, i'll eat it.

i did get the FP a few times...most fun was 0% condition maple syrup. i didn't even know that went bad.

 

at the very least, i try to play FP Roulette before bedtime. And presumably with a bathroom nearby.

 

 

[Dalos]

Decisions, decision.

 

 

[fauxjargon]

It seems like either setting the gear degradation rate to low or enabling revolvers changes a bunch of stuff, I have never been short of cleaning kits.

The exact code I am using is 8snM-bg8P-Kxuz-gaCO-welB. 

The changes I have made vs Interloper:

Starting time is dawn, starting weather is clear <- bad weather RNG at the very start is not fun and does not create excitement or tension because you are not attached to your survivor and can just mulligan.

At-rest condition recovery rate and condition recovery rate are None.  Rifle and revolver are on, item decay rate is low.

 

I think next time I will bump up the calorie burn and fatigue rate, as so far, I have >100 cattails just stashed in random places along my way because they were getting too heavy.

 

I do plan on going to Bleak Inlet.  In this run I already went down to the upper part of it.  I did have an unplanned timberwolf encounter and lost about 30% health,  but thanks to my rifle all four of them lost their skins.  Regarding self defense, I don't consider revolvers or rifles to be a big deal until you are out of flare gun rounds.  The flare gun draws fast and will 100% stop a moose or bear with a hit and you don't even need to hit non aurora wolves.  On past Interloper runs I usually only go through a flare gun round every 20 days or so, and that slows down as the game transitions from travel and looting to making a long slow cycle between two or three bases to gather food, fuel and furs.  

[Dalos]

so one of the things that 's challenging about staying on one map for so long is that you forget the stuff you did on the other maps. I made my way slowly back to trapper's and did not find the other bear hide. it's at the camp office. I did however find 4 wolf cured wolf pelts and plenty of dried guts.

so instead of huffing back to the office, i decided to stick around and make my wolf coat.

took 3 full days of course but i got it made. unfortunately, i didn't catch any rabbits and had to eat up much of my stored food stuffs. I am now down to cattails, chocolate bars and some odds and ends.

 

still, it is really nice to see only one down arrow on my temp. it's a nice day and no wind but that is something i haven't seen since about 20 days.

on to mystery lake.