1000 Days in the Dam: An exercise in inventory control

[ElvisHunter]

Climbing with a coffee fatigue bonus makes a huge difference. 

[Pillock]

10 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

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.

What? Did you not go into the yellow railway engine carriage thing whatever it is?

[Dinhammer]

8 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

I fully agree that the place is designed as a trap

It's funny you say this... I thought the very same thing while I was down there.  It reminds me very much of the pitcher plant in its design.  Some sweet looking goodies at the bottom, an easy descent and a deceptively disproportional ascent.

 

[Drifter Man]

2 minutes ago, Pillock said:

What? Did you not go into the yellow railway engine carriage thing whatever it is?

I did.

An empty box was what I found. Which made me search harder for what was supposed to be there - the box got in here, and there is no way out, so what was inside, must be somewhere around here, right? Hence the clever trap...

[Drifter Man]

15 minutes ago, ElvisHunter said:

Climbing with a coffee fatigue bonus makes a huge difference. 

It may be a good idea to drink coffee before getting onto a rope you don't know. I'll test that. As always

[Dinhammer]

Wait... the, uh... "rare goodie" wasn't inside?  Ugh!  It might be that

when you opened the case, the contents fell under the world.  When I opened it, this happened to the shells.  I was only able to recover the gun and three flares out of however many were originally there.

[Pillock]

5 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

Hidden Content

Hidden content, indeed. You must have been unlucky.

I've been down there twice now (and up once): both times I found "a good thing".

[Drifter Man]

Well then, maybe I overestimated the cleverness of the trap

4 minutes ago, Pillock said:

I've been down there twice now (and up once)

You luck was way, way tougher than mine.

[Patrick Carlson]

Quite the journey! Thanks for documenting it and sharing with us. 

[Ruruwawa]

@Drifter Man Nice pictures and story for your climbing trip.   Regarding rabbits, 

I've seen a rabbit spawn 3 of 4 times I've been down there.  Must be not guaranteed but when it's there it's right outside the cave.

[Jolan]

On 5/4/2016 at 5:15 PM, Drifter Man said:

Which reminds me of one thing I noticed in Coastal Highway: there were no wolf vs deer encounters. This can make things harder for people who rely on wolves to bring meat to them - if there are any such people left after the update has made wolves trickier to deal with.

the good part is if I see deer I can flounce around relatively free of worry, the bad part is I'm having a harder time scaring the deer into the wolves - its like they're hitting an invisible wall and won't cross into the current wolf patrol zone.

[Drifter Man]

Day 602 (553rd day in the Dam)

I used my first data on the degradation of clothes to determine whether or not I want to move to the cave. The data is based on 57 days of (nearly) constant wearing + one reference piece kept in a container, but I consider them too inaccurate to post as definite numbers. However, I hope the results are accurate enough to support my decisions.

The rabbitskin mitts in the container only degraded by 1% over that time period and only because I happened to identify the day on which they changed from 100% to 99%, I could estimate the container modifier to be about 1/40 - in other words, I guess that clothes in containers degrade about 40 times slower than when worn.

a) Minimum temperature bonus 22°C, constant wearing (optimum for cave), less than 1 wolf pelt per 100 days*:

• 10 cloth, 27 repairs, 8 deer hides, 8 rabbit pelts, 1 wolf pelt, 17 guts per 100 days
• repair deerskin boots, pants, mittens, heavy wool sweater and wool longjohns at 95% condition
• repair wolfskin coat at 84% condition
• repair scarf, socks and toque at 80% condition

*getting wolf pelts is difficult and dangerous these days, and I only have 8 in storage.

b) Minimum temperature bonus 20°C, constant wearing (minimum for cave?):

• 3 cloth, 20 repairs, 8 deer hides, 8 rabbit pelts, 1 wolf pelt, 17 guts per 100 days
• repair deerskin boots, pants, mittens at 95% condition
• repair wool longjohns at 90% condition
• repair wolfskin coat at 84% condition
• repair heavy wool sweater at 80% condition
• repair scarf and socks at 55% condition
• throw away toque

c) Minimum temperature bonus 18°C, wearing 25% of the time except boots and pants (must be quite a sight!):

• 1 cloth, 11 repairs, 8 deer hides, 2 rabbit pelts, 1/3 wolf pelt, 10 guts per 100 days
• repair deerskin boots, pants, mittens at 95% condition
• repair wolfskin coat at 87% condition
• repair wool longjohns at 85% condition
• repair heavy wool sweater at 80% condition
• repair socks at 55% condition
• repair scarf, toque at 50% condition

Actual bonus achieved on just 1 cloth per 100 days in c) is 21°C! The option to save stuff in containers is just too great an advantage... I will still get rid of scarf, toque and socks, sacrifice 1.1°C of the bonus and save 0.15 cloth per 100 days along with 0.75 kg of weight.

Right now I have 270 pieces of cloth and estimate a need for 7 cloth per 100 days to repair the bedroll I sleep in and the spare. Living in the cave would increase cloth consumption by 25% compared to the Dam (20°C vs 18°C result), and shorten my outlook from 3375 to 2700 days. I'm not moving to the cave unless I find out that I need the time otherwise spent commuting between the Ravine and the Dam.

[Jolan]

maybe you should move to rabbit grove?  its got bunnies, a bed and not too many wolves - its still a shame you can't drag bedding to the dam - or even better salvage beds to make bedrolls.  

[Drifter Man]

12 minutes ago, Jolan said:

its got bunnies

Does it have enough bunnies? Like, 8 per day? And deer that you can hunt, knowing they can't run away far? 

[nicko]

50 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

Right now I have 270 pieces of cloth and estimate a need for 7 cloth per 100 days to repair the bedroll I sleep in and the spare. Living in the cave would increase cloth consumption by 25% compared to the Dam (20°C vs 18°C result), and shorten my outlook from 3375 to 2700 days. I'm not moving to the cave unless I find out that I need the time otherwise spent commuting between the Ravine and the Dam.

Where did you collect 270 pieces of cloth staying in the dam area / map?

[Drifter Man]

36 minutes ago, nicko said:

Where did you collect 270 pieces of cloth staying in the dam area / map?

Only about 60 pieces are from Mystery Lake. I brought the rest from Coastal Highway. I estimate there still are 100-200 left.

[nicko]

ah ok so your not staying in the dam for 1000 days then? I think I seen some one else also just suggest your title is misleading and incorrect?

maybe it needs to say

1000 Days in the Dam: An exercise in inventory control.

then I changed to:

1000 days of just anywhere?

[Drifter Man]

@nicko I've never intended to stay 1000 consecutive days in the Dam starting from Day 22 or whenever I first came, that would be impossible. So far I've spent 553 out of 602 days in the Dam. When I leave to gather resources, I sleep elsewhere. But you would have known that if you read not just the title, but also the first few posts  

The point is that 1) I consider the Dam (or the Ravine, more precisely) to be the location in which I have the best chances to survive in the long term, 2) I'm looking for an optimum utilization of resources to achieve that, 3) I share my findings with others and learn what they know and think.

[Jolan]

7 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

Does it have enough bunnies? Like, 8 per day? And deer that you can hunt, knowing they can't run away far? 

hm, no the deer tend to wander into the bear's territory - wait you can get 8 bunnies a day in the Ravine? the most I've every gotten is two.  Right off to go try that one again - personally I am beginning to suspect the rabbits are trolling me

 

[Drifter Man]

Day 605 (556th day in the Dam)

20 hours ago, Jolan said:

wait you can get 8 bunnies a day in the Ravine? the most I've every gotten is two.  Right off to go try that one again - personally I am beginning to suspect the rabbits are trolling me

My 10-day diet is now: one deer, 53 rabbits.

On the first day of the cycle, I go to the Ravine and hunt one deer. Then I place 5 snares in each of the three rabbit zones: one in a protected clearing to the left, immediately after the bridge when I arrive from the Mystery Lake map; second close to fallen tree over the ravine; and third at the railroad dead-end between the fallen tree and the second bridge. Over the next seven days, I come every morning to check the snares. On a bad day I find six rabbits. On a good day, nine or ten. I wait for them to freeze to 50%, then I put my hacksaw to work. I only take the large, 1-kg pieces from each rabbit: this saves a ton of firewood and cooking time. On average I also find 1-2 ruined snares, so I take guts from rabbits for their replacement.

Switching to hacksaw solved one problem (knife wear) but brought another, unanticipated one. The caught rabbits start to freeze (and decay) the moment I enter the Ravine, and take over 3 hours before reaching 50%. I have to wait... sometimes I can pick sticks, take guts etc. but a lot of time is wasted. When I return to the Dam, there only are about 6 hours of daylight left. This reduces the opportunity for sunlight to start a fire, and I end up using more matches than I want. Options:

• Rearrange schedule: keep rabbit meat in a cave in the Ravine and spend the first 2-3 hours in the morning cooking in the cave while the fresh rabbits are freezing (if sunlight is available). There is no need to bring the meat and sticks to the Dam. Keep the Dam supplied with venison only. My doorstep will look a bit less like a butcher shop.
• Expand to the Winding River and make use of the two rabbit zones there. This means dealing with the local wolf. But if I catch even more rabbits per day from more areas, I will have more completely free days for cooking.
• Use hacksaw on unfrozen carcasses. More hacksaw wear, more calories spent.
• If nothing helps, move to the cave and save commuting time

Good news: I accidentally found one of the hatchets buried by Hinterland terrain modeling artists, and dug it up again. I was working on some rabbits and suddenly I see a white dot and the word "Hatchet" in the snow. Welcome back, hatchet.

[Pillock]

I'm going to to take this opportunity to resume badgering you about trying fishing.

From the Dam, the nearest hut is under a game-hour's walk, and you don't need to risk wolves much at all to get there. I've experimented with routes, and you can go off-piste to the hut at the 'back-end' of the lake near lonely cabin in pretty much a straight line, avoiding the river access altogether. You have to climb the rocks out of the bit where the deer blind and Alan's Cave is, then go over the hill and descend the rockface right next to the hut. On the way back, you have to climb the slope on the right as you exit the hut to the ridge that separates Southern Access from the Lonely Cabin cove, and then walk back the way you came via the hunter's grotto bit (I forget its name). There's sometimes a wolf there, but he's usually chasing rabbits on the other side of the valley and is pretty easy to avoid. That'd give you pretty much a whole day's fishing if you wanted. I'll try and take some screenshots of the route if you're interested.

Fishing is good because you don't need a knife or hatchet (crowbar is good for breaking the ice), and you have a stove on hand and are sheltered from the wind. Fish takes half the time to cook as meat, and though you sometimes need to burn fuel while fishing if it's too cold outside, harvesting rabbits is not immune from this problem either. You can also use the magnifying lens inside the hut to light the stove.

I'd be really interested if you were able to get some results on average calorie yields vs resources expended compared to rabbits and deer! But I don't suggest this entirely for selfish reasons - I genuinely think it might be a viable addition (if not alternative) to your current food collection cycle, especially if you thinking of making changes to it anyway at this point.

[Ruruwawa]

On 5/8/2016 at 7:47 AM, Drifter Man said:

Living in the cave would increase cloth consumption by 25% compared to the Dam (20°C vs 18°C result), and shorten my outlook from 3375 to 2700 days.

Very interesting analysis, thanks for sharing!

[Drifter Man]

3 hours ago, Pillock said:

Fishing is good

It's on the to-do list  Though I admit it has been there for maybe 200 days. I see fishing as an alternative source of food that I could use once I'm forced to leave the Dam. So I'm too interested in the matter. How many calories I spend and get, which resources do I need. My plan is to set up a temporary base on the lake for a few weeks to get enough data. Unfortunately, right now there are more pressing issues...

[Drifter Man]

1 hour ago, Ruruwawa said:

Very interesting analysis, thanks for sharing!

And a flawed one, too. As might be my whole strategy. It assumes that deer hides are an unlimited resource, but they are limited by the number of arrow shots and bullets I have. Once I run out of deer hides and wolf pelts (and the means to obtain them), I'm dead, because I lose 14°C of my temperature bonus without any standard clothing to replace it - I harvested everything into cloth and used it to repair my bedroll. Very smart...

I'm going back to Coastal Highway to see what I can scavenge from the remaining houses at the Townsite. I will need a good coat, boots and pants (any suggestions? I don't know much about these, I went to crafted clothes as soon as I could). Before everything turns into dust.

[cekivi]

44 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

And a flawed one, too. As might be my whole strategy. It assumes that deer hides are an unlimited resource, but they are limited by the number of arrow shots and bullets I have. Once I run out of deer hides and wolf pelts (and the means to obtain them), I'm dead, because I lose 14°C of my temperature bonus without any standard clothing to replace it - I harvested everything into cloth and used it to repair my bedroll. Very smart...

I'm going back to Coastal Highway to see what I can scavenge from the remaining houses at the Townsite. I will need a good coat, boots and pants (any suggestions? I don't know much about these, I went to crafted clothes as soon as I could). Before everything turns into dust.

If you haven't looted Timberwolf Mountain yet there is normally a container their filled with mitts, cargo pants and winter jackets. Be a bit of a trip though