1000 Days in the Dam: An exercise in inventory control

[nicko]

Is this experiment still going since latest update? can you start again?

[Ruruwawa]

3 minutes ago, nicko said:

Is this experiment still going since latest update? can you start again?

I started this game a couple days ago -- v332.  I think that's the current version.

[nicko]

soz I was referring to the op @Drifter Man

[Drifter Man]

7 hours ago, Ruruwawa said:

Is it worth it?  Honestly I don't think so -- a lot of work for not much gain.  But I think I will try to round up bedrolls in future whenever I'm in striking distance.  I found only one bedroll each in ML, DP and CH. Four in PV, and, based on past experience, I'm expecting another 3-4 in TWM.  If bedrolls are the object, PV and TWM seem to be the place to concentrate the search.

I eventually came to the conclusion, too, that rushing out to get everything is not worth it. You will get more of the decaying stuff than you can use, and it will just rot in your cupboard instead of another. As for the non-decaying stuff, it will wait for you. Bedrolls are probably the only exception. It may be worthwhile to make a trip just to collect a couple of these.

[Drifter Man]

7 hours ago, nicko said:

Is this experiment still going since latest update? can you start again?

It is still going - I'm not starting again, I continue with the same save. Right now I'm adjusting to the post-update world and I'm at work again to get the new decay rates. I'm glad people come back to check!

[Pillock]

 

6 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

It is still going - I'm not starting again, I continue with the same save. Right now I'm adjusting to the post-update world and I'm at work again to get the new decay rates. I'm glad people come back to check!

Keeps it interesting to have everything chucked up into the air every now and then!

[Drifter Man]

Day 588 (539th Day in the Dam)

A regular day again: I went to the Ravine, caught and harvested one deer (9.66 kg), collected 95 sticks and placed 15 snares. I don't have much space at the Dam for meat, and the growing campfire graveyard also doesn't help. I will have to come up with something. Storing 70 kg of rabbit meat like this is not an option.

I figured out that now if I cannot carry all the meat I've harvested, I can just drop it at the carcass and pick it up on the next day - it's not going anywhere. Which brought me to another idea: Do I even need to sleep in the Dam? Wouldn't it be easier to move my bedroll to one of the caves and only go to the Dam once when I need something from storage? Food for thought.

In the meantime, the decay tests started getting out of hand, so I just took pictures of the items whose decay rates I want to measure, and named the files with day number. I will take another set of pictures after some time passes and evaluate the difference. Here's my food test locker as of Day 587:

[Ruruwawa]

 

6 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

I figured out that now if I cannot carry all the meat I've harvested, I can just drop it at the carcass and pick it up on the next day - it's not going anywhere. Which brought me to another idea: Do I even need to sleep in the Dam? Wouldn't it be easier to move my bedroll to one of the caves and only go to the Dam once when I need something from storage? Food for thought.

In my regular game I live in the cave near the deer, with storage and crafting in the Dam.  It's a nice life, actually--quite bright and picturesque compared to the Dam.  But you'll have to rename your thread if you move.

 And yeah, I often just drop the meat next to the carcass, collect it later.  It's especially great for harvesting a bear - the condition of all the meat is still quite high when you finish.

[Drifter Man]

15 hours ago, Ruruwawa said:

In my regular game I live in the cave near the deer, with storage and crafting in the Dam.  It's a nice life, actually--quite bright and picturesque compared to the Dam.  But you'll have to rename your thread if you move.

Great - how do you deal with the weather? Morning blizzards could get temperatures to -30°C-ish levels even in the cave. My thinking is: go to bed before nightfall and sleep until ca 5 hours of darkness left, and just pass time during the coldest part of the night. Start fire if necessary and use it to cook or boil water. How do you manage this? What is your difficulty level?

I am almost decided to move, I just don't want to make too many changes at once now. Right now I have some other ideas... The name will stay, it is a good trademark  This thread is about efficiency in resource management, not about living/sleeping in the Dam at all costs.

[Pillock]

48 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

The name will stay, it is a good trademark  This thread is about efficiency in resource management, not about living/sleeping in the Dam at all costs.

 

Living in a cave is inherently less efficient than living indoors -the heating costs see to that. You've also got the added danger - not a problem in the Ravine, but in some locations - of having your sleep disturbed by wolves.

But if you wanted to test the relative costs of indoor vs outdoor living, it would be a really interesting new dimension to your project!

[Drifter Man]

58 minutes ago, Pillock said:

Living in a cave is inherently less efficient than living indoors -the heating costs see to that

I think if I use the fire for cooking as well as heating, I could make up for it. But if it should mean that I have to keep a fire burning every night, it wouldn't work - matches would run out soon.

[Drifter Man]

Day 592 (543rd day in the Dam)

I've got a shiny new toy in the Dam: the hacksaw. And it's quite a blast  Originally I just wanted to use it to get scrap metal from all those metal shelves and tables in the Dam. This scrap metal would later be used for improvised tools or fishing hooks. But I also knew that meat can be harvested with it from frozen carcasses, and a test revealed that it is as fast as the hatchet in doing this: 1 kg in 10 minutes (and 42 Cal). It wears out at the same rate as the hunting knife, 1% per 1 hour of work on a carcass. One hacksaw can be therefore used to harvest 600 kg of meat.

My hunting knife is now the first thing I expect to run out of, although this moment is projected to around 900 days from now. I suppose I will find more knives and whetstones in the meantime, but it is still a limiting factor. Hatchet can replace knife, but that's just another name for the same problem - once I'm out of whetstones, I cannot harvest meat, and I have to go to the forge to make improvised tools.

There's an alternative solution now: the hacksaw can be repaired by 25% with 1 scrap metal. I used one sleepless night to count how much scrap metal I can get from the Dam alone: the answer is around 300 pieces. That's 75 hacksaws = 45 tons of meat = 20,250,000 Cal = about 6200 days on a rabbit-only diet. The hacksaw hack turns the relatively most acute problem - the ability to harvest meat - into the least pressing one, immediately.

Turning that scrap metal into improvised knives may prove to be more efficient - after all, you only need 3 pieces for one 100% knife compared to 4 pieces to fully repair the hacksaw. I will know for sure once I make a few samples of the improvised tools and test them properly. But the hacksaw could certainly spare me some repeated dangerous trips to the forge. And "the fifth need" of a survivor in TLD (security - after warmth, food, fire and rest) becomes increasingly important as wolves become more lethal.

[Pillock]

26 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

I think if I use the fire for cooking as well as heating, I could make up for it. But if it should mean that I have to keep a fire burning every night, it wouldn't work - matches would run out soon.

You wouldn't be able to sleep during cold weather in that case. But you could still use the Dam as a blizzard shelter, I guess - it's really isn't far from the cave in the Ravine, and easy to navigate even in the worst visibility.

[Ruruwawa]

9 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

Great - how do you deal with the weather? Morning blizzards could get temperatures to -30°C-ish levels even in the cave. My thinking is: go to bed before nightfall and sleep until ca 5 hours of darkness left, and just pass time during the coldest part of the night. Start fire if necessary and use it to cook or boil water. How do you manage this? What is your difficulty level?

I am almost decided to move, I just don't want to make too many changes at once now. Right now I have some other ideas... The name will stay, it is a good trademark  This thread is about efficiency in resource management, not about living/sleeping in the Dam at all costs.

You know that there are two temperature zones in most caves?  The back of the cave is pretty warm.  I don't remember exact numbers, but it's not too different from an indoor space.  

I totally understand not wanting to make too many changes.  Gotta control those variables!!

EDIT: I just noticed you asked about my difficulty level: Voyageur for my cave-dweller games.

[Pillock]

2 minutes ago, Ruruwawa said:

You know that there are two temperature zones in most caves?  The back of the cave is pretty warm.  I don't remember exact numbers, but it's not too different from an indoor space.  

I'm not sure it's similar enough - for blizzards, anyway. It would be certainly worth finding out. You might be ok with a bearskin bedroll and animal-skin clothes. But you would have to kill bears and wolves every now and then to keep that going.

By living indoors, you can control your fuel consumption and choose when to cook and boil water; you can guarantee being fully rested and warm at the start of your day. If you're in a cave, you might be throwing those variables open to the wind - literally.

[Ruruwawa]

3 hours ago, Pillock said:

I'm not sure it's similar enough - for blizzards, anyway. It would be certainly worth finding out. You might be ok with a bearskin bedroll and animal-skin clothes. But you would have to kill bears and wolves every now and then to keep that going.

By living indoors, you can control your fuel consumption and choose when to cook and boil water; you can guarantee being fully rested and warm at the start of your day. If you're in a cave, you might be throwing those variables open to the wind - literally.

I've lived in caves in ML, the Ravine, Crumbling Highway, PV, and TWM now -- about 100 days.  By caves I mean the large ones that go several meters back into a rock or hillside.  (And not loading-screen caves or mines.)

Re temperature, it's pretty comparable to mountaineer's hut in the back half of the cave.  I use a normal bedroll but I wear my four fur clothing pieces to bed.  Typically I'll wake a couple hours before dawn.  If there's a blizzard or low temps that's my cue to cook up food or water -- chores I save for the coldest mornings.  (There's never any wind at the back of the cave, fires are as reliable as a stove.)  Many days I don't start a fire at all.  

This is just info to keep in mind.  If you prefer indoors, that's great.  I like the outdoor setting and close proximity to sticks and my trapline.

[Drifter Man]

So, I'm a bit torn in between now  But @Ruruwawa's experience is encouraging and in agreement with my own ideas. Last time I checked, the caves in the Ravine had a 7°C temperature bonus (I think I've read it's 10°C in the Mountaineer's Hut). With a full set of clothes - their maintenance is not so hard now after the decay rates have been tuned down, but I will see once I have definite numbers - I should easily have +22°C bonus from clothes and +3°C from the bedroll. Only blizzards should be able to threaten me, so I'd wake up with about 5 hours left and continue sleeping with 1-hour increments or pass time and start a fire if necessary. The main risk lies in human error - if I click "rest" instead of "pass time" at the wrong moment, I could get in trouble.

Note that this wouldn't be possible (at least from my perspective) before update, when indoor containers were needed to store large quantities of meat. Now, outdoor storage is preferred.

Advantages: proximity to my hunting grounds and sources of firewood, complete avoidance of wolves

Disadvantages: risk of hypothermia, higher clothing maintenance costs.

We will see how this all plays out. I still want to go to Ravine bottom, test improvised tools, try survival on fishing, and visit some places in Coastal Highway I've left out. And put together a new calculation method that will see forward not for hundreds but thousands of days. A lot of things to do.

[Drifter Man]

1 hour ago, Drifter Man said:

Last time I checked, the caves in the Ravine had a 7°C temperature bonus

Correction: it is 8°C now.

[Pillock]

7 hours ago, Ruruwawa said:

I've lived in caves in ML, the Ravine, Crumbling Highway, PV, and TWM now -- about 100 days.  By caves I mean the large ones that go several meters back into a rock or hillside.  (And not loading-screen caves or mines.)

Re temperature, it's pretty comparable to mountaineer's hut in the back half of the cave.  I use a normal bedroll but I wear my four fur clothing pieces to bed.  Typically I'll wake a couple hours before dawn.  If there's a blizzard or low temps that's my cue to cook up food or water -- chores I save for the coldest mornings.  (There's never any wind at the back of the cave, fires are as reliable as a stove.)  Many days I don't start a fire at all.  

This is just info to keep in mind.  If you prefer indoors, that's great.  I like the outdoor setting and close proximity to sticks and my trapline.

I agree with you. I've only started to try cave dwelling recently, and only in Stalker - I don't think it's possible to sleep reliably in caves without a fire in Stalker, judging by my experience, certainly not without the full animal-skin set-up, anyway. But if it works in Voyageur, that's great.

I do like the idea of living outdoors, especially compared to the dark and gloom of places like Carter Dam, but I just haven't been able to pull it off successfully yet! I ran out of fuel in the middle of the night during a blizzard once, and had to make a run for it - luckily I knew roughly where I was going or I think I would have died. So that experience has coloured my perception of it a little!

[Ruruwawa]

1 hour ago, Pillock said:

I agree with you. I've only started to try cave dwelling recently, and only in Stalker - I don't think it's possible to sleep reliably in caves without a fire in Stalker, judging by my experience, certainly not without the full animal-skin set-up, anyway. But if it works in Voyageur, that's great.

I do like the idea of living outdoors, especially compared to the dark and gloom of places like Carter Dam, but I just haven't been able to pull it off successfully yet! I ran out of fuel in the middle of the night during a blizzard once, and had to make a run for it - luckily I knew roughly where I was going or I think I would have died. So that experience has coloured my perception of it a little!

I started a new stalker game on TWM yesterday with the idea of gearing up and trying the no-hibernation cave dweller thing on stalker, but I doubt I'll stick with it.  Surviving, even in my looted clothes, is fine.  (Food/water/rest seem easier than Voyageur, actually -- I'll have to measure sometime.)  I'm still in the mountaineer's hut though -- need fur togs for the caves.

But the SPRAINS!  I've had 8 sprains in 11 days, most at 90%+ rested, doing things like stepping out my front door or sedately walking along.  I'm 5 sprains away from using up the painkillers from both med supply cargo containers, ugh.  At this pace doubt I'll make it 3 weeks even if I pick every berry bush on the map.

[Drifter Man]

38 minutes ago, Ruruwawa said:

But the SPRAINS!  I've had 8 sprains in 11 days, most at 90%+ rested, doing things like stepping out my front door or sedately walking along.  I'm 5 sprains away from using up the painkillers from both med supply cargo containers, ugh.  At this pace doubt I'll make it 3 weeks even if I pick every berry bush on the map.

Interesting - I almost always leave my sprains untreated and just sleep them off. Unless I need to run or shoot, they make no difference. Has anything changed in this respect since v.321?

[Ruruwawa]

28 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

Interesting - I almost always leave my sprains untreated and just sleep them off. Unless I need to run or shoot, they make no difference. Has anything changed in this respect since v.321?

Maybe I treat them too aggressively?  They happen when I'm out and about I'm doing something, often it's something you can't do with a sprained wrist: hunt with a ranged weapon or climb a rope.  Ankles aren't too bad (you can't sprint).  My luck with this game: 6 wrists / 2 ankles.  I sprained both wrists simply walking up to a rope during my ascent.  That's 4 painkillers just to climb the rope and get out of the cold.

I often start my games on TWM and this is quite unusual in my experience.  It's my first new stalker TWM since v321 landed, so maybe they decided to crank up the sprains?

[Drifter Man]

I haven't observed any increase in the frequency of sprains since v.321, I only had few sprains before and few (two?) after. On Day 500 I had 17 wrist sprains and 19 ankle sprains total - one in 14 days. In reality I would be totally crippled at that rate

TWM is a very different map... and climbing is something I didn't think about.

[Ruruwawa]

The change might be Stalker-only.  I play a lot on TWM (mostly Voyageur since the updates) and by nature prefer a slow movement style.  I don't normally see a sprain rate any worse than your experience.

Apologies for going off topic.  Get back to yer spreadsheets!  

[Drifter Man]

Day 596 (547th day in the Dam)

Over the last seven days I caught 59 rabbits and decided it's enough for this cycle, although I'm still in the process of rebuilding my calorie reserve following the trip to Coastal Highway. The weather wasn't favorable to starting campfires (or else) and I had to spend some matches. Another match was spent to light a torch when a wolf approached me at the Dam; it worked and the wolf immediately ran off.

This morning started with a light fog, my favorite, and I decided it was a good day to descend to the Ravine bottom. I took the bedroll, an emergency stim, more coffee than usual and cattail stalks for food to save weight. I carried about 16 kg. Wasting no time, I went to the Ravine, took hold of the rope and climbed down.

Climbing down cost only 58 calories but my fatigue bar was already depleted by about 30%. I fully agree that the place is designed as a trap, and a rather clever one at that, but as long as you are prepared and have a bedroll with you, you'll be fine.

At first it lets you look for a valuable item that either isn't there or is well hidden, for I didn't find it. If you search the place twice to make sure that no stone is left unturned, like me, your fatigue bar will drop and you will not be able to make it back, unless you have a bedroll with you.

All I found were reishi mushrooms, cattail stalks and rosehip bushes. It was mentioned that there is a rabbit run, but I didn't see any rabbits, which makes me wonder if the basin continues somewhere I couldn't get to. There are sticks - enough for a decent fire, and a tree limb waiting to be taken apart if you have a hatchet. A cozy cave offers the standard 8°C temperature bonus.

I spent about 3 hours running around. Then I went to Pillock's cave, rolled out my bedroll and slept for 5 hours to get rid of my fatigue, and returned to the rope.

I took a break at Dinhammer's non-optional ledge and used the opportunity to take a few pictures at sunset from an unusual perspective.

Finally, I made it to the top. Climbing up didn't cost many calories, but look at the fatigue bar... I was fully rested at the bottom. Without a bedroll, I'd be dead as a doornail. Thanks, @Pillock.