Stalker revisited - feedback on v265

[ChillPlayer]

Yesterday I began a fresh run in ML on Stalker and reached day 58 today. I urge everyone who is bored on a current long run to do the same, at least now I see some pieces of the bigger picture and why some ressources are as plentyful available as they are - no this won't be another thread about too much stuff. But first things first, some general feedback on the new additions the latest updates brought us (not sure if everything was introduced in 264/5) - it's a long read so grab a coffe and share your thoughts :

Weather System

Simply put: amazing! I love the fact that there are many different degrees of bad weather, a blizzard does not just show up and keeps you trapped outside, weather builds up through various stages, increasing wind, heavier snowfall, differents grades of fog with some, little or pracitcally no visibility and not every build up in bad weather ultimately leeds to a blizzard, sometimes it gets better and the sun comes out again or it stays foggy all day long . There are blizzard like conditions but you can still see quite far or fog so thick you can barely see your hand, before there was basically: clear weather, strong wind, fog or blizzard, now there are many more different shades of grey (not sure if 50 ).

And the sound, wow I'm really hyped by the new soundeffects. You hear thunder rolling, wind gusts that you can almost feel and you hear branches breaking, if the visuals are not enough, the sound sure tells you that it's time to find some shelter - fast.

I think the devs have put a lot of thinking into the weather system, like that limbs of wood don't just appear out of thin air but drop down after some heavy winds. I heard them falling several times I think, I'm not sure if you can get hit by one though lol.

The past 20 days or so I've spent on Jackrabbit Island and here's one thing I discovered about animal spawn: As soon as the weather is any degree of bad, when you don't hear/see any crows near corpses, there are no animals at all. It used to be like that during or after a blizzard but now some snow and wind with visibility just barely to the coast will keep the animals at home. So yes respawn times might still be too short, but on one occasion it took me three days to find a deer/wolf couple on the frozen sea in CH due to bad weather (mind you, not blizzards). When your frige and stomach are empty this can make you do some desperate things, like going fishing

So I'm not clearing the devs from the too much food issue just yet, I haven't been in PV and don't know if the food delivery service in shape of a bear is still near Farmstead, but making animals scarcer by various weather conditions is a step in a very right direction.

There's only one thing with the current weather system I don't like that much - and I can't believe I'm writing this - at least in ML an CH are way too few blizzards with visibility 0. During the past 58 days I have witnissed one single blizzard, fortunately close to camp. But the constant thread of a blizzard and the preparation this required was a huge part of the thrill in leaving your safe camp, now you must almost beg and ignore all foresigns to get caught in one.

Personally I feel like the blizzard frequency could be increased again, not to PV v200 values but somewhere in the middle between v200 and v265.

Sprained wrist

It took me a while to figure this out, I asked myself why my wrist gets sprained all the time when moving through terrain and not my anckles, out of a sudden it dawned on me: I had my rifle out. This is genious and if anything this will clearly distringuish TLD from any first person shooter. I haven't sprained my wrist once when I had the rifle holstered but many times when equipped, on one occasion even when I was only climbing the stairs to Forestry Lookout. We are not Rambos but survivors, nothing makes this as clear as this, so only draw your rifle if you need it

Bite wounds

The fact that you can have multiple bite wounds that all need bandages cost me my life three days in on my first attempt yesterday, when I thought I can boldy go to the dam and fight Fluffy with my knife to get the rifle. He got me good and it took 3 bandages to stop the bleeding, I had only two, end of story. Depending on playstyle all those bandages you find suddenly aren't that many, I myself never again will leave the house without at least 9.

I am not sure if I just had bad luck with the RNGesus or if this is intended, but I only found a single bottle of antiseptic in ML, which is great. Suddenly I began harvesting Old Men Beard for lack of any different antiseptic and I felt some kind of desperation while I couldn't find either of them, knowing that a single handfight will end my run again. I appreciate this very much, it brings some of the "old" drama back to the game and I truly cheered when I finally found enough OMB to craft the antiseptic bandages;)

Food poisoning

It took me a while and some cursing to realize this but the new system is genious. For those who don't know it, you can get food poising from everything now, cooked, bagged, canned whatever when it's condition is at 50% or below (not sure about this number, might be even 70%). Over are the times where you could eat everything cooked down to 1% (I did this many times with bear meat) or stuff yourself with crackers down to 20%.

This added to some drama in the early game, when I had some venison stored in Camp Office while camping in the Dam for several days. I returned to the camp and had only water for one-two days, no other food and no wood. I ate a cooked venison at 49% condition and bam, poisoned. This forced me to sleep for 10 hours, when I tried another venison I got poisoned again. In the end I had no food, no wood and no water, I had to go outside and kill a wolf without a deer, almost freezing to death and getting hyperthermic while harvesting and trying to find some wood, in the end I had to break down the table for wood and recovered when my condition was down to 30ish %.

And here comes the kicker: Thanks to this, long term eating/sleeping is finally fixed or at least cut in half. Because once your food is down to 50% you can't safely eat it anymore and have to get more food.

Hyperthermia

This is also something you really have to be aware of in the early days when all you have are a pair of jeans and a thin wool sweater. Similar to food poisoning, being hyperthermic can really spoil your day if you didn't plan for it and don't have any ressources in your camp, getting stuck inside for 24hours. Add food poisoning and suddenly you begin praying to your gods

Clothes condition

I gather this is one of those min/max value testdrives the devs are doing, in previous versions your cloths would lose condition faster than you can sew but now they virtually don't lose any condition at all. I crafted all my clothes around day 24 and now at day 58 they are still over 95%, although I was outside in many bad weather (not blizzards) and have slept for days in them. This makes the huge stockpile of cured deer hide and wolfskin kind of obsolete. Again, some middleground between previous versions and the current one should be found, I want to be able to wear my clothes at least for a week without the need to repair them but also not virtually forever, otherwise I won't skin animals anymore.

Foraging

First I hated it, now I love it. Not only does it add a huge amount of realism that you can't simply click a button and forage wood while being trapped inside a fishing hut by a pack of wolves, it also forces you to go outside ever so often and "listen" to the weather. But I think that branches and sticks really are kinda pointless, I didn't had any troubles so far to find enough limbs of fir or cedar wood for my needs.

It also makes sense that you can break down the furniture inside a building, I see it as the games way to give you a second chance - but only once. Get trapped by hyperthermia or food poisoning again inside the building you've broken down all the furniture and you will have a hard time.

other improvments

- I like the new bear spawn in ML altough I kinda wished he would go up to the Lookout, would make for some scare jumps

- The new graphics are amazing and jaw dropping, especially close to dusk and dawn. I like the thicker snow and in general the new weather graphics.

- Same is true for the new soundeffects, be it the rattling from my backpack or all the animals like woodpeckers, owls and apparently some monkeys, at least that's how they sound (anyone knows what those are?)

- The new condition icons are a welcomed change to the text messages before

- The new map and transition to it is awesome, I really like it. It's small but has alot to offer and the buildings finally don't feel as copy/pasted as in ML and CH (which is true for PV too).

- Not sure yet if I like it but it sure is an improvement: if you try to cross over the narrow edge in Carters River back to the Dam and fall, the game saves the fall! In previous versions you could hit "ESC" and reload from inside the Dam, now your fall is saved. But - bug or intended? - when I loaded again I was hanging in the wall and could crouch my way down without falling to death, fortunatelly. I think this should be fixed but I also think that the whole ledge should be a bit thicker so you won't get pushed down by the walls when you are walking in a straight line, it's a very unfair death trap and does not feel true to the overall game experience.

- Animals don't keep you trapped for ever anymore inside a Hunter's Blind or Fishing Hut. I think this was introduced in the last update already but just to mention it again: finally!

Uff, alright, I think that's all I've to say about the current version.

TL;DR: The pieces of the bigger picture I mentioned before are: hyperthermia, food poisoning, new foraging, injuries, increased need of medication and the new relationship between weather and animals. Early game up until you've crafted clothes seldom was as intense as now and there are already mechanics in place that force you to take risks even in the later stages of the game. Add faster decay of cloths and reduce the availabilty of walking food a bit more and the game becomes once again what many of us strive for: a true challenge and an intense experiences. Looking forward to the next update

[Boston123]

I must disagree with you on forging.

It is so unrealistic, it actually make me.... not "disgusted", more "disappointed". Blacksmithing, that is, the forging of metal into tools, is a "dying art". And, while it is slowly (so slowly) making a comeback, it is still rather rare ( I personally only know 3 people who forge, 1 guy who is famous in my region for it, my local Boy Scout ranger [who was lent tools from the first guy], and a guy in my Scout troop that built his own forge). And, on top of being rare, it is really REALLY complicated. Does our intrepid bush-pilot know about the different carbon grades of steel, or which degrees of temper are suited for different tasks, or how to quench metal the metal properly?

And forging metal isn't even necessary for most tools

Yesterday, I made 15 arrowheads in real life, with little more than a hacksaw and a metal file. Took me three hours. I can put a good enough sharp edge on one of the arrowheads for it to be "usable" as a knife-blade.

-sigh-

[ChillPlayer]

I haven't written a single word about forging, only about foraging wood Personally I couldn't care less about it, other than the fact that forging arrow heads forces me to break my routine a bit, instead of going through CH to PV I am now on my way to DP.

[KD7BCH]

I must disagree with you on forging.

It is so unrealistic, it actually make me.... not "disgusted", more "disappointed". Blacksmithing, that is, the forging of metal into tools, is a "dying art". And, while it is slowly (so slowly) making a comeback, it is still rather rare ( I personally only know 3 people who forge, 1 guy who is famous in my region for it, my local Boy Scout ranger [who was lent tools from the first guy], and a guy in my Scout troop that built his own forge). And, on top of being rare, it is really REALLY complicated. Does our intrepid bush-pilot know about the different carbon grades of steel, or which degrees of temper are suited for different tasks, or how to quench metal the metal properly?

And forging metal isn't even necessary for most tools

Yesterday, I made 15 arrowheads in real life, with little more than a hacksaw and a metal file. Took me three hours. I can put a good enough sharp edge on one of the arrowheads for it to be "usable" as a knife-blade.

-sigh-

That level of realism is sort of unrealistic to expect in a game. Yes it is complicated, however the concept is easy to understand. Metal melts when it gets hot enough, so really you'd just have to repeat the process until you figured out and experimented enough to make it work.

Contrast that with the fact that fire-making without a tool given by the world (magnifying glass or striker) and or matches isn't in the game yet craft-able fire-bows is a very real way to make a fire and it is missing.

[Boston123]

I haven't written a single word about forging, only about foraging wood Personally I couldn't care less about it, other than the fact that forging arrow heads forces me to break my routine a bit, instead of going through CH to PV I am now on my way to DP.

My apologies, I misread " foraging" as "forging"

That level of realism is sort of unrealistic to expect in a game. Yes it is complicated, however the concept is easy to understand. Metal melts when it gets hot enough, so really you'd just have to repeat the process until you figured out and experimented enough to make it work.

Contrast that with the fact that fire-making without a tool given by the world (magnifying glass or striker) and or matches isn't in the game yet craft-able fire-bows is a very real way to make a fire and it is missing.

The point being that they deliberately chose the most complicated and obtuse method of making arrowheads (I am specifically referring to arrowheads, here. Don't use the forged knife or hatchet, don't plan on using them), ever. Why can I not make "small game" broadheads from the bottom of a can, or "large-game" broadheads, like in these two videos? Easier (MUCH so), faster (MUCH so), and all around "more effective" than trying to hammer them out of some scrap. And, in survival, how quickly something can be done and how easy it is to do is essentially how "good" it is. I know how to build a lean-to, but I carry a tarp because it is easier, faster, and just as effective, if not more so. Understand?

The concept of forging is easy to understand, yes, but it is much more difficult to put into practice. Case in point: I helped to teach the "Blacksmithing merit badge" at my local summer camp. The teenagers understood what they had to do (make a Dutch-Oven hook), the process in which to do it, and yet it took them a better part of a week to do so. It isn't just "heat up metal, hammer it flat". You have to understand how the metal works, what it will do. I made a knife-blank from an old lawnmower blade. I knew what I was doing (relatively) , and it still took me three days to make the blank, much less temper it and sharpen it.

In my opinion, forging metal shouldn't even be in the game. It is "too unrealistic", even in the severely diminished form we have in-game. Anybody can take a file and a pair of pliers to some scrap metal, if they are pressed enough. Not too many people would even think about picking up a hammer and trying to forge some scrap metal of unknown qualities in the boiler of an old ship.

Come on, now.

[ChillPlayer]

I was thinking the same thing, why can't I just cut out the bottom of a can and use it as an improvised arrowhead? But then I guess some things you have to accept as being a gameplay mechanic rather than something realistic. There are so many things that make little sense compared to what you'd do in reality, the more important question is: does it make sense gameplay wise.

It does to some degree, in the long run the furnace functions as an anchor point where you will return ever so often to forge new heads, or let's say in a very long run. I just crafted 21 heads and could've made many many more, that's alot of dead wolves until I run out of arrows, with everyone being reusable 3-4 times at least

[Spottdrossel]

TL;DR: The pieces of the bigger picture I mentioned before are: hyperthermia, food poisoning, new foraging, injuries, increased need of medication and the new relationship between weather and animals. Early game up until you've crafted clothes seldom was as intense as now and there are already mechanics in place that force you to take risks even in the later stages of the game. Add faster decay of cloths and reduce the availabilty of walking food a bit more and the game becomes once again what many of us strive for: a true challenge and an intense experiences. Looking forward to the next update

I'm sceptical about a lot of this.

One reason is the low number of samples. We cannot know of those event are just rare cases of good/bad luck or actually the "new normal".

A while back someone tried to explain that the wolves were afraid of seeing you wield the rifle. That was based on 2 instances where a wolf was running away while (s)he was holding the rifle.

Turned out it was just a coincidence.

With V.258 I had a couple of days where I got food poisoning twice and then months without a single case.

Nothing changed during this run. Might just be bad luck here as well.

Furthermore there was no big announcement about "fixing hibernation", so I doubt this is the solution everyone and their dog was waiting for.

Receiving sprained wrists from walking with a rifle in your hands is just non-sense.

How's that supposed to happen? What reasonable explanation is there for this injury?

And I completely disagree with needing faster decaying clothes for "challenge".

It's an artificial obstacle, a cheap trick to create difficulty where no sensible problem could be found/created.

If that was the answer to providing a challenge, it would just be set to absurdly high levels.

"Your jeans will fall apart in 14 days. Try to survive as long as possible!"

That's not how I understand a challenge. That's just arbitrary and shallow.

[Hylander]

It does to some degree, in the long run the furnace functions as an anchor point where you will return ever so often to forge new heads, or let's say in a very long run. I just crafted 21 heads and could've made many many more, that's alot of dead wolves until I run out of arrows, with everyone being reusable 3-4 times at least

Yeah, I made 46 in two days, with that many I'll never run out. Course, at about day 50 the house reset and I lost all my stuff...

And I think arrow heads are reusable pretty much indefinitely, unless you lose them - when the arrow is used up, it breaks, and you can harvest the arrow head and two of the feathers from the broken arrow.

[signal]

A tip for newer players: If you are bleeding and out of bandages, you can harvest cloth to make bandages. If you don't have cloth nearby, harvest your hat, scarf, or any small item. You can usually do that before bleeding out.

[madrepityu]

@ChillPlayer

How can you reach day 58 just playing about less than a day?

I'm playing usualy 3-5 hours every night and for me it's like 3-4 days spent ingame.

One ingame hour equals like 5 real time minutes. If you're sleeping 11 hours every day then you got 13 hours left to play. 13 ingame hours = 65 real life minutes. Let's say every ingame day you do something what takes 3 hours time shifted. It's something like 10 ingame hours = 50 real life minutes.

If you played 10 hours then you made 5.8 days every 60 minutes. That's almost a day/10 minutes. :shock:

[ChillPlayer]

You should join my stream madrepityu, after yesterday's stream I'm at day 66 actually and have a full stock of bear meat to sleep for at least another week The day I started this run ended at day 24 without sleep/eating for more than 2 days because that'd bore my viewers too much - but I've crafted all my clothes by then which alone took 2 days, cooking food and water also takes half a day very quickly. The next day I did some more eat/sleeping for about two weeks in total (wasn't streaming) to have cured various stuff, rest cooking, harvesting and so on. There are many mechanics in place that let you pass time very quickly besides sleeping.

@Spottdrossel: you can try it out yourself, in fact I encourage you to do so just to have more numbers. Before this update I've worked out a special routine how to eat food "efficiently" before it decayed to 0% condition, I ate literally several dozens of pieces of meat below 10% in my career and not once got poisoned. Now the number seem to be: chance of poisoning = 100%-condition%, so if your food is down to 20% you have a chance of 80% to get poisoned.

In this playthrough I was poisoned about 6 times so far and everything was cooked or baged. In the more than 1000 days I've spent already in Stalker in previous updates I got food poisoning maybe three times, one time deliberately but I had to eat about 15KG of raw decaying meat to get it. So yes technically I might have just very bad luck and that's why I urge everyone to try it out, but I'm pretty sure the game doesn't hate me that much. Be sure to start a new run though

Sprained wrist actually makes sense - and is also something you can try out yourself. I almost never walk on roads, always as high as possible in the terrain and with the rifle out I had at least 5 times sprained my wrist - not once my anckle mind you and never again since I holster my rifle. It makes sense to some extend I guess if you want to add more danger to climbing cliffs than a sprained anckle. The rifle is 4KG and holding it constantly might weaken your hand, at least that's how I explain it to myself.

@Hylander: you are right, totally forgot that you can reuse the arrow heads. So yes, DP might be a one time stop for players but it has some convenient food spots to offer, like a bear walking by the Riken (home delivery service) and a nice pool of ice with 4 wolves in them near Hiberia Processing which is a perfect spot to try out the freshly made bow&arrows.

Although either my aim sucks or they changed something, my up until then proven method of aiming down in a 45degree angle and releasing when the wolfs head is in my aim didn't kill a single beast instantly, I ended up handfighting 4 wolves in a row, some had the arrow pierced through the ear, some through the snout. Might be a consequence of the missing white dot but I don't feel as confident with the bow as I used to right now :roll:

[Spottdrossel]

Sprained wrist actually makes sense - and is also something you can try out yourself. I almost never walk on roads, always as high as possible in the terrain and with the rifle out I had at least 5 times sprained my wrist - not once my anckle mind you and never again since I holster my rifle. It makes sense to some extend I guess if you want to add more danger to climbing cliffs than a sprained anckle. The rifle is 4KG and holding it constantly might weaken your hand, at least that's how I explain it to myself.

Sorry for saying this, but something just doesn't make sense because you say so twice.

People don't get sprained wrists just from carry stuff. You get that from accidents.

I'm carrying a bag with a laptop and some other stuff that's close to 4 kg everyday to work and not once did I sprain my wrist doing so.

Of course we could also add random bleeding to up the ante.

But the question would remain the same: What is supposed to cause this? Where is the lore explaining this event?

[Boston123]

^ Yeah, pretty much.

You sprain your wrist, or ankle, for that matter, when you suddenly twist the tendons in the joint past where they are "supposed" to go. This overwhelmingly happens due to falling: the ankle due to twisting the leg, and the wrist due to you attempting to catch yourself as you fall.

How you sprain your wrist by walking while holding something, I don't know. I can see spraining your wrist when fighting an animal, but not just ..... holding something.

[brun]

Very nice original post! Thanks for that. It pretty much sums up my experience as well. I think to have gathered that meat goes bad when below 65%. Not quite sure though :-) Anyway, things like meat going bad is a brilliant way of tweaking difficulty without compromising the overall experience. Kudos to the devs for not loosing focus on the original idea, and their ongoing tweaking of the mechanics. I haven't noticed hearing any wood falling in the forest though, but will keep my ears open in the future. How cool it would be, if there were just a remote chance of getting hit by falling wood!?! It's in the detail the gold is buried.

[ChillPlayer]

About the sprained wrist: guys I've just written down what I observed so far and the fact of the matter is that my wrist didn't get sprained once since I holster my weapon like a good boy but many times when I ran around like in an FPS. This is ment as a hint if your get a sprained wrist all the time and don't know why.

If this makes sense in real life or not is beyond me, gameplaywise it does because it's a handy method to have you holster the gun, as you would probably in real life when climbing mountains. I'm willing to accept that the game does take huge shortcuts to fullfill some gameplay ideas, more important to me is to know about them.

[Hylander]

Although either my aim sucks or they changed something, my up until then proven method of aiming down in a 45degree angle and releasing when the wolfs head is in my aim didn't kill a single beast instantly, I ended up handfighting 4 wolves in a row, some had the arrow pierced through the ear, some through the snout. Might be a consequence of the missing white dot but I don't feel as confident with the bow as I used to right now :roll:

What I've found works very well (in v.265) is to aim about one head width to the right of the wolf's head, and release when the wolf is about one or two body-lengths from me. I get almost 100% one-shot kills that way.

[ChillPlayer]

Very nice original post! Thanks for that. It pretty much sums up my experience as well. I think to have gathered that meat goes bad when below 65%. Not quite sure though :-) Anyway, things like meat going bad is a brilliant way of tweaking difficulty without compromising the overall experience.

Yes I thought so first, finally I can't camp on a whole bear's meat safely for two weeks but then - what should I do with all that meat, throwing it away? I'm not sure you can eat the whole bear without the meat going bad, for sure not if you have the meat in your backpack and just eat/sleep, maybe if it's stored in a container and you pick up two pieces each day. I'll test this as I already have a bear cooked and ready on my current run

@Hylander: thanks I'll try this, I've planed to experiment anyways with the bow so I can insta kill them again. I mean it's not dangerous to fight them by hand because they are already down to near 20% but it's still annoying.

[whisperwind777]

@ChillPlayer

How can you reach day 58 just playing about less than a day?

I'm playing usualy 3-5 hours every night and for me it's like 3-4 days spent ingame.

One ingame hour equals like 5 real time minutes. If you're sleeping 11 hours every day then you got 13 hours left to play. 13 ingame hours = 65 real life minutes. Let's say every ingame day you do something what takes 3 hours time shifted. It's something like 10 ingame hours = 50 real life minutes.

If you played 10 hours then you made 5.8 days every 60 minutes. That's almost a day/10 minutes. :shock:

The first several days are toughest. After you've settled and built your stock, it's easy to kill a bear, cook all the meat and hibernate for the next 30 days.

[madrepityu]

@ChillPlayer

How can you reach day 58 just playing about less than a day?

I'm playing usualy 3-5 hours every night and for me it's like 3-4 days spent ingame.

One ingame hour equals like 5 real time minutes. If you're sleeping 11 hours every day then you got 13 hours left to play. 13 ingame hours = 65 real life minutes. Let's say every ingame day you do something what takes 3 hours time shifted. It's something like 10 ingame hours = 50 real life minutes.

If you played 10 hours then you made 5.8 days every 60 minutes. That's almost a day/10 minutes. :shock:

The first several days are toughest. After you've settled and built your stock, it's easy to kill a bear, cook all the meat and hibernate for the next 30 days.

What are you talking about? There's nothing to do with the first several days.

I'm talking about the time it takes for him to reach day 58.

and hibernate for the next 30 days.

Ahh, so that's how you play TLD.

If you play TLD like that, I don't think you have any rights to judge the game iself on the forums, and your opinions are worthless here. You're just abusing the mechanics and play it for the leaderboards. I can imagine how exciting could be to "hibernate for the next 30 days". LOL

Sorry, but it's way too pathetic!

[ChillPlayer]

First of all: everyone is allowed to play the game the way he wants and if you aim for a high place in the LB (surviving 1000 days or more) hibernation is the only way to go. To call someone pathetic because he uses the most efficient way to survive for a long time in a game where the sole goal is to survive the longest is pathetic by itself.

Having said that, please read my answer again - I was almost constantly streaming during my run and people would complain if I'd just hibernate. The fact is I've done the opposite of this, explored ML completely incl. the bunker, half of CH and half of DP while crafted all my clothes and got bow&arrow. As I said, there are many ways to let time fly by.

So instead of spitting on other users (not sure if you ment whisperwind or me), learn to play the game efficiently If you'd have asked nicely I would even share my log with you so you can learn and wouldn't find it as astonishing that I'm surviving already for so long. But as we say in german, the tone makes the music and your soundtrack sounds awful...

[thinair]

Coal is also a killer, i mean in a good way. 3 coals weights only 0.9 kg, and gives you 3 hours of fire plus it heats up fast. For example fir is 1.5kg and only 1 and half hour of burning time, so from now on i just carry around 1 cedar or 1 book for good success of fire starting, and 3 coals, so in emergency i have like 3-4 hours of fire

[Hylander]

Coal is also a killer, i mean in a good way. 3 coals weights only 0.9 kg, and gives you 3 hours of fire plus it heats up fast. For example fir is 1.5kg and only 1 and half hour of burning time, so from now on i just carry around 1 cedar or 1 book for good success of fire starting, and 3 coals, so in emergency i have like 3-4 hours of fire

Fir is 1.0 kg for 1.5 hours burn time, cedar is 0.5 kg for 1 hour.

You can't start a fire with a book and then immediately add coal - the fire has to burn for 20-30 minutes before you can add coal.

[ChillPlayer]

Yeah but coal clearly beats everything with 900g equaling 3 hours of burning time once you have a fire going for half an hour. Does anyone know though if it respawns?

[lupineways]

Yeah but coal clearly beats everything with 900g equaling 3 hours of burning time once you have a fire going for half an hour. Does anyone know though if it respawns?

I've been wondering about that. I have been going around the mines a lot lately and have been trying to get all the coal i see every time. Either I keep missing some or it has some sort of respawn going on. I cannot tell for sure yet, but time will tell. I believe I completely cleared the mine that runs through DP at this point. I will check again soon and see if more crops up.

[thinair]

Coal is also a killer, i mean in a good way. 3 coals weights only 0.9 kg, and gives you 3 hours of fire plus it heats up fast. For example fir is 1.5kg and only 1 and half hour of burning time, so from now on i just carry around 1 cedar or 1 book for good success of fire starting, and 3 coals, so in emergency i have like 3-4 hours of fire

Fir is 1.0 kg for 1.5 hours burn time, cedar is 0.5 kg for 1 hour.

You can't start a fire with a book and then immediately add coal - the fire has to burn for 20-30 minutes before you can add coal.

some minor errors in my stated facts make no difference.... by far coal is the best. by the way i actually use books only for home. for traveling cedar + coal is way to go. I might even expirement with carrying a book and few sticks so it makes to 30 mins of burning time, so i can add coal.... to win some less carrying weight.