Bear Skin Bedroll in survival mode

[Tradus]

Surely this topic has already been raised, and more than once. Bear Skin Bedroll is very heavy and wears out very quickly and therefore has little value in survival mode. In any cave, you can sleep without fear of freezing to death, having the usual "Bedroll". It may be worth changing the wear rate of this item so that it wears out more slowly than "Bedroll"?

[ChillPlayer]

It has some use in Interloper where you need cloth for repairing your cloths, temperatures are lower, predators more frequent and your diet consists of mainly bear (and moose) meat anyway.

[Serenity]

Yeah, it has some uses. Especially in exposed locations. But I do agree that the decay rate is ridiculously high. Especially on Interloper. Could easily be cut in half.

[Lord of the Long Dark]

I only play interloper and deadman and I never use it. Heavy and no benefit to justify the weight. Absolutely useless. I use double bear coat too instead of moose skin coat so it’s especially useless for me. 

[hozz1235]

22 hours ago, Tradus said:

In any cave, you can sleep without fear of freezing to death, having the usual "Bedroll".

Depends on too many factors (outside temperature, clothes you're wearing, etc.) to give a solid answer.

[stratvox]

I take it. It's +12 takes many marginal situations and makes them easily survivable. I don't find its decay rate to be that bad; it's well over a month before you want to even think about repairing, and given the bear population on Great Bear supplying that is not really difficult. I tend to end up having the bear skins pile up anyway. If you have moose on outside (armour, waterproof) and bear on inside for coats, you'll only need a bear skin once every six months or so for the coat. It's relatively high decay rate's not really a big deal.

There are a surprisingly large number of nooks and crannies in many of the regions that don't qualify as caves but will offer protection from a blizzard. When you're looking at bunking out in one of those, the bear skin bedroll can make the difference between living and dying. I usually play custom now with blizzards and coldness set to max and yeah... it matters.

[Tradus]

On 11/2/2021 at 4:59 PM, stratvox said:

I take it. It's +12...

There are a surprisingly large number of nooks and crannies in many of the regions that don't qualify as caves but will offer protection from a blizzard. When you're looking at bunking out in one of those, the bear skin bedroll can make the difference between living and dying. I usually play custom now with blizzards and coldness set to max and yeah... it matters.

I use in "Interloper" survival mode, with health regeneration disabled completely.

But I really haven't tried turning on max blizzards yet. Perhaps you are right and it is useful at maximum settings.

[Mistral]

Useless waste of space on any difficulty I'm afraid. Just like the moose cloak.

Edited November 7, 2021 by Mistral

[Pencil]

Yikes; just crafted one on my Interloper lol. I see it as a safety precaution for blizzards + cabin fever. The +12 C is pretty insane though. It also takes significantly less time to craft if you don't want to spend 30 hours making the coat. 

I think weight shouldn't be a problem. You can get a +15 kg bonus with all of the benefits stacked together, so as long as you aren't carrying your hatchet, hacksaw, and heavy hammer at the same time, you should be able to stay under 45 kg while holding the bearskin bedroll. 

While whether or not the bedroll is worth it on Interloper remains a debate, I think we can all agree that it is not necessary in lower difficulties (unless you are several thousand days in and running out of cloth.) 

[stratvox]

I'm a hundred and seventy days in on a custom, cold and blizzards set to max, voyageur resource base, all afflictions (so predator meat in early game is a gamble), fire doesn't overcome ambient, struggle damage cranked, and animal awareness and scent increase set to max.

I just came into Pleasant Valley. Between maximum cold settings and maximum blizzards it's a hell. So much blizzard it makes getting around the region very difficult... PV is big and that allows the blizz setting max opportunity to mess with your life. You get like halfway across the field and all of a sudden all the faraway stuff disappears and thirty seconds later the wind's cranked, you've got all the down arrows on your temp meter, and you can't see sfa.

My POV on lower difficulties is that I (when I had No Idea What I Was Doing Back In The Day) successfully passed a night on the ledge up to the summit on TWM, and that was only because I had the bearskin bedroll. I'd ... messed up and got exhausted on the ledge. So, I slept. All night, in one hour shots. If I'd had the bedroll I would've been in trouble, but the bearskin kept me in positive territory all night. When I woke up shortly before dawn my FL was -10, or +2 in the bag. That'd've been -5 with a normal bedroll.

The bearskin's ability to open up a far greater number of places one can sleep in relative safety makes it not exactly necessary but really useful.

[Stone]

@Tradus Yup, its soul destroying and seems too quick. Leaving aside the rate of condition loss, I'd rather a non-linear relationship between item condition and temp bonus such that, for example, above 50% condition you'd have 75% of heat bonus retained and below 50% condition the heat bonus then drops rapidly. That way I wouldn't so quickly feel cheated by the lost of benefit.

The bearskin bedroll is effectively a luxury item. What it offers is still a unique temp bonus and opens up a little more freedom as @stratvox's play shows. Personally, I prefer huddling in a sheltered nook by a fire as the storm rages overhead over being wrapped in furs.

[Serenity]

On 11/7/2021 at 9:47 PM, Pencil said:

The +12 C is pretty insane though

Yep. It's not absolutely needed, but on occasion it can be nice. It allows you to spend more time in cars for example, which isn't really possible with a normal bed roll.

"Worth" is really relative. It's not like you are lacking in bear hides late in the game. Or you don't have time to craft it. Or you don't have the weight for it after the moose hide satchel and backpack. It's a luxury, but so what? What else are you going to do?

The real problem is the extreme decay. It's not balanced. Especially against the 200% item decay in Interloper. It's possible to lower that back down just for bedrolls by using a mod.

[Tradus]

My goal was to collect more different opinions and hear stories like @stratvox story. This is probably useful, but too fast deteriorate. Perhaps the developer will pay special attention to this and do something. By the way, a deerskin cape is also useless.

I remember how I crafted, tried on, put it under the bed in the climber's hut ...

I still hope Skin Bedroll will be more useful than it is now.

[Kranium]

I love it, and mostly only use it for certain "expeditions", so to speak. But I don't make one until mid-to-late game, on survival. At which point I have more bear skins than I know what to do with. Repairing it is a nice way to constructively pass time.