Harvesting by hand

[LostRealist]

10 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

... and do you realistically think that the old meat juices from before you got Cooking 5 aren't still on the cooking surface after you attain that level of expertise or that your hands and gloves are not just that much dirtier later on in the game than they are days after starting out?  Actually, I'm surprised we don't just get arbitrarily "smelly" over the course of a run such that it doesn't matter whether or not we're packing around raw meat in that moment for a wolf to smell us.  It's a game (lol) - Level 5 cooking is just a thing people want to attain because they like the perk - not having to worry about being poisoned by 100-day old cooked meat that has, perhaps, stayed frozen, but likely has sat out on the ground exposed to the sun and maybe been even pissed on by wolves, etc. Enjoy.  Personally, I don't kill so much in advance that I can't get it eaten before it goes bad.

I actually agree, I don't eat ruined stuff either for immersion's sake - just pointing out what I find to be the most reasonable answer to "Why does it matter how good you are at cooking" when relating to parasites specifically. Logically, cooked meat is cooked meat, no matter how experienced the chef was. But the path it takes to get there may look quite different and since it spends that path being not cooked, that's when it's dangerous. Most parasites would only stay mobile and alive for so long when exposed to the air directly and their eggs would dry out quite quickly, but if an inexperienced chef puts the cooked slab on the same surface he prepared the raw meat on and then eats it from there - that'll do. Also not unlikely this would be something that's pointed out emphatically in a book like "Wilderness Kitchen", methinks.

I don't know, for my headcanon it's the logical answer. Your mileage may obviously vary, that's up to you.

Edited December 11, 2023 by LostRealist

[UpUpAway95]

28 minutes ago, LostRealist said:

I actually agree, I don't eat ruined stuff either for immersion's sake - just pointing out what I find to be the most reasonable answer to "Why does it matter how good you are at cooking" when relating to parasites specifically. Logically, cooked meat is cooked meat, no matter how experienced the chef was. But the path it takes to get there may look quite different and since it spends that path being not cooked, that's when it's dangerous. Most parasites would only stay mobile and alive for so long when exposed to the air directly and their eggs would dry out quite quickly, but if an inexperienced chef puts the cooked slab on the same surface he prepared the raw meat on and then eats it from there - that'll do. Also not unlikely this would be something that's pointed out emphatically in a book like "Wilderness Kitchen", methinks.

I don't know, for my headcanon it's the logical answer. Your mileage may obviously vary, that's up to you.

Well, head canon is a lot like soap - cleaning up innumerable things in the gaming world. 😀I seldom get to Level 5 cooking in my runs since I limit most of them to 50-days, so it's not a head canon I really need any mileage from.  Wouldn't mind some soap in the game to wash these stinking clothes though.

[LostRealist]

59 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Wouldn't mind some soap in the game to wash these stinking clothes though.

That is true. I think some basic hygiene would be an interesting angle to the survival dynamics.

[xanna]

I've started to change my mind about the harvesting animations a bit. The lurchiness of it depends a bit on where you are positioned relative to the carcass when you start to harvest - which makes sense - and I don't find it as motion-sickly as I did in most cases. I am guilty of a bit of a knee-jerk 'unfamiliar thing bad' reaction and I admit I'm getting used to it now.

[UpUpAway95]

1 hour ago, xanna said:

I've started to change my mind about the harvesting animations a bit. The lurchiness of it depends a bit on where you are positioned relative to the carcass when you start to harvest - which makes sense - and I don't find it as motion-sickly as I did in most cases. I am guilty of a bit of a knee-jerk 'unfamiliar thing bad' reaction and I admit I'm getting used to it now.

I still don't find the look of them great, but I'm sure they'll work on it some more when/if they have the time, and they, like all animatons of repetitive actions, will get repetitive after awhile, I'm sure.

I'm learning to live with harvesting without being able to do it by hand.  It still doesn't make logical sense to me to have to use a tool to skin a rabbit or break into a ptarmigan, but it is what it is.  I also still feel that quartered bags should be able to be harvested by hand when thawed since the player has already needed and used a tool to quarter the animal in the first place (and taken an associated condition hit on the tool).  Making them take a condition hit on the tool for every bag (regardless of whether they just use the tool for the first cut from the bag or use it to harvest the entire bag) seems a bit excessive to me.  I hope they will consider changing it in the future.

Also, I don't think the change will have any real effect on deterring micro-harvesting since people seem to have already found a workaround (but I also don't really feel that was HL's primary goal in making the change).

 

[xanna]

11 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I also still feel that quartered bags should be able to be harvested by hand when thawed since the player has already needed and used a tool to quarter the animal in the first place

Yeah, this feels like a bug/oversight, maybe?

[UpUpAway95]

On 12/11/2023 at 5:58 AM, UpUpAway95 said:

I'm starting to think the more limiting factor on this run is more likely to be matches rather than the life of the prybar (as is the case with many of my 50-day runs in one zone (unless a mag lens is found).  I haven't got a lot of clothing, so I really have to pick and choose what days I can fish - foggy is best.  Fortunately, the bear seems to be AWOL this run so far.

Also, I wanted to add that I do know I can harvest rabbits, etc. with the hacksaw; but part of the challenge is that I'm only using that tool for cutting wood and, if needeed, additional scrap metal for fish hooks.  The more limiting factor on making tackle in Broken Railroad, of course, is not scrap metal (if one does have a hacksaw) but gut is limited to the number of prop deer in the zone, which usually runs about a total of 8 and then one prop wolf can also spawn down below the broken bridge.

It's turning out to be a more interesting run than I thought it would be.  Scurvy, however, should not be a factor with the amount of fish in the diet.

The answer, I think, to my question of how long is going to be much longer than I originally thought.

OK, I'm 22 days into this "challenge" and ready to do some extrapolations rather than continue the run:

I began cutting fish holes when my prybar condition was 94% (due to opening lockers and the car trunk in Broken Railroad with it).  It loses 2% condition for each hole and is now at 80%; meaning I've cut 7 holes in 22 days.

With the weather settings (pilgrim level) in this file; and can usually fish for a full day when I fish (say, 8 hours).  I started out averaging about 4 fish in that time but now, with leveling up a big, I catch around 6 per go.  This is ample to keep up with calories and, since, most of the fish I can are whitefish (with a moderate vita-C content when cooked), the diet should also keep scurvy at bay.  By the way, I have been, for the most part, maintaining the well fed bonus as well).

I've not been using lures or tip-ups.  I did use cut up some small Goldeye I caught into bait instead of cooking them.

I've also used 8 matches (out of my total of 48 found in the zone - I found a couple of boxes after I had missed on my first clearing of the zone).

So, in conclusion, I could certainly keep this file going well beyond the 50-day mark without ever leaving Broken Railroad.  Of course, the demands on resources with interloper weather and the lower fish spawn chance would probably make this run a real struggle to maintain for 50-days in that small zone; but it should be easily doable in larger zones where larger fish can be caught (like Coastal Highway).  It's probably not practical at all in Ash Canyon, where there is simply insufficient scrap metal to keep up with the loss of hooks due to line breakage (although breakage gets less common as one levels up fishing).

With wolves turned right off (to avoid the temptation to use "wolf kills") and the bear not spawning, predators were a total non-issue in this run.  No bunnies or ptarmigan were harmed in the making of this test.😀

Edited December 13, 2023 by UpUpAway95