Birthday suit challenge (hard)

[mellow_swe]

A lot of new challenges in the forums lately, I love it!

It's a sign of a versatile and great game when you can find so many different ways to make it interesting.

In that spirit I decided to issue a challenge of my own.

This challenge is hard and may not appeal to everyone.

I tried this a while back while trying to figure out if it was possible to survive indefinitely in the game.

The rules are simple:

You may start in any location you wish.

Since this challenge is designed for more hardcore survival you need to play on stalker difficulty.

And here is the only important rule:

YOU MAY ONLY USE RESOURCES THAT ARE INFINITE!

For clarity purposes I'll define an infinite resource as one that:

a) Respawns in the game within a reasonable amount of time, say 50 days.

or

b) Does not degrade either by use or time.

This means that as soon as you spawn you need to drop all your items and continue in your birthday suit (naked).

You may use any indoor shelter or cave as they do not degrade.

You need too think one step further when determining whether an item can be used or not, for instance the rifle may not be used since it degrades and does not respawn within a 50 days.

Sure, you can clean the rifle but cleaning kits are finite so hence the rifle is finite.

Cat tails cannot be used either, yes they do not degrade over time but they disappear when used as food and do not respawn within 50 days.

I am on the fence about allowing snares...reclaimed wood is a finite resource but once you have constructed the snares they would be infinite since when they break you can harvest it for reclaimed wood and use gut to make a new one.

I think for this challenge I will leave it out to make it a little harder but feel free to try it in a different run.

If anyone feel up for it just post your times here.

If you have questions about the challenge or whether an item is usable in the challenge, post them here and I'll give you my take on it.

GL!

If you are stuck and need a hint:

[spoil]Make sure you find a magnifying glass...fast! [/spoil]

[Dirmagnos]

So, essentially you cant use anything but sticks, since everything else either degrades or is in limited amount ? Including magnifying glass(it both degrades and is in limited amount). Including clothes.

[selfless]

Magnifier does not degrade. It has a variable condition when it is found, but that condition has no effect on its effectiveness and never deteriorates. It had been possible to wear it down back when things were damaged during bear attacks, but I don't think that is possible anymore. Regardless, maybe base your challenge on an exact list, rather than leaving it open for interpretation.

Or is that the intent? Get someone to post their amazing story then slam them down with "you cheated 'cuz you didn't interpret the rules the same way I intended them to be read".

[Scyzara]

If I interpret the rules right, the only things allowed to consume or use are:

[spoil]- deer & rabbit meat (killed by wolves) that you've harvest barehanded,

- water acquired by melting snow,

- sticks, branches & birch bark,

- the magnifying lens

- campfires and torches pulled out of campfires.[/spoil]

Every other item that comes to my mind (incl. medicine) isn't infinite (or cannot be acquired without another item that isn't infinite).

Crafting fur clothes is thus probably forbidden as well as both sewing kits and fishing tackles (scrap metal) are finite resources.

Is this list more or less what you had in mind, mellow_swe?

[mellow_swe]

If I interpret the rules right, the only things allowed to consume or use are:

[spoil]- deer & rabbit meat (killed by wolves) that you've harvest barehanded,

- water acquired by melting snow,

- sticks, branches & birch bark,

- the magnifying lens

- campfires and torches pulled out of campfires.[/spoil]

Every other item that comes to my mind (incl. medicine) isn't infinite (or cannot be acquired without another item that isn't infinite).

Crafting fur clothes is thus probably forbidden as well as both sewing kits and fishing tackles (scrap metal) are finite resources.

Is this list more or less what you had in mind, mellow_swe?

Yes that is pretty much the way I intended it.

And I may be wrong about this, but as far as I know the magnifying glass does not degrade either when you use it or by time. I do not know if it degrades in a bear attack but for the purposes of the test I did (and the basis for this challenge) it is not important if it does or not.

There is a backstory to the challenge but I wanted to keep the OP short and to the point.

For quite some time people were debating whether it was possible to survive indefinitely in the sandbox or not. [spoil](now I think most people realize that it is possible, at least in this build of the game)[/spoil] Many theories were put forward but noone seemed to be able to test it since you can survive a vast number of days before you even begin to run out of supplies. ThresholdSeven on these forums has a game going where he is over 2700 days in!!

Well I wanted to test this so I tried to think what life in the sandbox would be like when you run out of EVERYTHING that can run out.

I started eliminating items one by one. At first I just ate meat or cat tails and used the clothes I had on me when I started the game but quickly realized that they would eventually be destroyed too.

One by one my strategies that seemed to work well in a normal game, how to hunt, how to maintain my tools etc, all went out the window

I ended up with the list of items Scyzara mentioned and decided to try playing using that.

I'm sorry if I was a bit unclear about which items you can and can't use but to an extent that was the point, to let each of you find out yourselves how to survive in the very extreme endgame of the sandbox. :twisted:

[Dirmagnos]

Ahh, my bad, havent used Magnifying Glass for a long time.

Altho i dont consider such strategy survivable, 2 many things must be in perfect alignment for it 2 work.

Searching for corpses; kiting wolves to attack deer, then repelling them with torch/fire; gathering firewood. All while freezing your bare ass in matter of minutes, that will result in hypothermia, meaning that you can go outside for 24 hours and need to constantly burn wood that you dont have.

[Scyzara]

The biggest problem in my opinion is that collecting enough sticks naked without losing too much condition is probably very difficult.

As you have to keep your anti-wolf hunting campfire burning for several hours - both to reach a decent temperature bonus while you harvest the deer meat (sticks give off very little heat, only 0,5°C per stick) and to make sure you can cook your fresh meat immediately afterwards, you'll need several dozens of sticks per fire. And if a strong wind comes up at some point and blows out your fire and the wolf thus attacks you (they attack immediately after your fire duration changed to 9min, you have no time to react at all), you're possibly screwed anyway for an infection means inevitable death.^^

I'm not saying that surviving this way for a long period of time is impossible in general, but I personally believe it's extremely hard to gather enough sticks (naked, hence freezing almost immediately) to keep a fire burning during the whole harvesting & cooking process. Another thing is that hibernation-starvation is probably more or less mandatory to survive this way, at least during periods of bad weather.

Anyway, I'll give it a try later on without hibernation. My hope to last for more than a few days is very small, but who knows.^^

Edit:

Okay, running around naked proved to be much less problematic than I had thought.^^

Sleep-healing compensates the health-loss from freezing pretty easily. I'm usually down to 50-60% in the evening, but heal back to 100% during the night. Hunting times aren't that limited either as you can keep a torch burning for the rest of the day without a problem once you've lit a fire in the morning/noon. Survived for five days without greater trouble so far, but finding enough food is really pretty challenging if you refuse to starve yourself on purpose.

[Hatchet]

Is a heavy hammer not considered infinite since it uses infinite fir firewood to maintain it.

Coal is also infinite since it respawns.

Fire problem solved?

Storm lantern never degrades, also infinite, not the kerosine though

Mountaineer rope, depending how you look at this one, also an infinite item.

Just speculating, if i were to try this i would need a list before me with every last item i can use

[Scyzara]

Is a heavy hammer not considered infinite since it uses infinite fir firewood to maintain it.

Coal is also infinite since it respawns.

Fire problem solved?

Storm lantern never degrades, also infinite, not the kerosine though

And what exactly would you use such an empty storm lantern for? You can't light it without kerosine and you can't harvest it for scrap metal because that's a finite (and thus forbidden) resource. The lantern is a completely pointless item to carry around in my opinion.

As for the Hammer: A) it requires a toolbox to maintain it which isn't infinite and B) fir isn't infinite either as you can't harvest fir without a hatchet (which is finite).

But coal is a good idea, might definitely come in very handy.

However, the real problem (at least for me) wasn't to find enough fuel or not to freeze/catch hypothermia, but rather to find enough food. Never made it past day 10 for that reason (as I refused to use the hibernation exploit).

If a wolf kills a deer on even the gentlest slope (e.g. only 5% inclination), that carcass is lost for you unless you can harvest at least part of it immediately before it starts to freeze. (You can only build campfires to thaw up a carcass in perfectly flat areas and dropping multiple torches doesn't work to thaw up carcasses on a slope either).

As deer run a completely unpredictable nonsense course sometimes since the TWM update, chasing them into wolves in order to have the deer killed in a totally plain area eventually can be pretty complicated (and frustrating..) on maps like ML where the number of deer in completely plain areas without nearby hills is very limited. During my longest game, I've lost about 2/3 of my potential deer carcasses due to some gentle slopes which was incredibly annoying.

I guess it's easier in CH or DP with their vast ice plains, maybe I'll try out these maps at some point.

Oh, and if you use the starvation-hibernation exploit, you'll most likely be fine on every map. You're usually able to light a fire at least every second or third day, if you're not consuming 2000-3000kcal per day but only 800 having enough deer killed in decent places should be very doable on every map.

[mellow_swe]

That's been my experience too Scyzara.

The cold is not a big problem as you can usually find good areas where sticks are plentiful every few days when a storm comes. Also you really only need the fire to thaw out carcasses, cook meat, and boil water. All of those can be done in one go if a storm does not appear while you're doing it.

Need about maybe 3-4 hours worth which is maybe 40 sticks every few days.

The inability to light fires on slopes is a problem and unfortunately not very realistic but that's what the game gave us. Sometimes it's possible to light the fire on top of the carcass by keeping it level but not always.

I guess if someone were to play the thousands of days it would take to get to this point they wouldn't mind doing the hibernation technique, for myself I've found it to not be feasible anyway as I usually lose condition to other factors such as the cold and need every nights rest to replenish that condition.

For the purpose of the challenge and to help people get going maybe allowing harvesting of pre-existing carcasses is needed. I did not mention this earlier because I was hoping for some of you purists out there to make a run at it without them but I would certainly NOT disqualify anyone who uses them. They have little meat on them and are spread out so their use would probably only buy you a few extra days anyway.

I would love to give you guys an accurate list of items that can be used but I don't know all of them. As long as you can argue for an items infinite use it's all good. Like the lantern, if it doesn't decay then it is fine BUT as Scyzara pointed out the kerosene is NOT so you can not light it. But if there is some use for an unlit lantern then go ahead.

One thing I would hope to get from this is a list of items that are infinite and this community are the best at finding stuff like this out.

[Hatchet]

Is a heavy hammer not considered infinite since it uses infinite fir firewood to maintain it.

Coal is also infinite since it respawns.

Fire problem solved?

Storm lantern never degrades, also infinite, not the kerosine though

And what exactly would you use such an empty storm lantern for? You can't light it without kerosine and you can't harvest it for scrap metal because that's a finite (and thus forbidden) resource. The lantern is a completely pointless item to carry around in my opinion.

As for the Hammer: A) it requires a toolbox to maintain it which isn't infinite and B) fir isn't infinite either as you can't harvest fir without a hatchet (which is finite).

But coal is a good idea, might definitely come in very handy.

However, the real problem (at least for me) wasn't to find enough fuel or not to freeze/catch hypothermia, but rather to find enough food. Never made it past day 10 for that reason (as I refused to use the hibernation exploit).

If a wolf kills a deer on even the gentlest slope (e.g. only 5% inclination), that carcass is lost for you unless you can harvest at least part of it immediately before it starts to freeze. (You can only build campfires to thaw up a carcass in perfectly flat areas and dropping multiple torches doesn't work to thaw up carcasses on a slope either).

As deer run a completely unpredictable nonsense course sometimes since the TWM update, chasing them into wolves in order to have the deer killed in a totally plain area eventually can be pretty complicated (and frustrating..) on maps like ML where the number of deer in completely plain areas without nearby hills is very limited. During my longest game, I've lost about 2/3 of my potential deer carcasses due to some gentle slopes which was incredibly annoying.

I guess it's easier in CH or DP with their vast ice plains, maybe I'll try out these maps at some point.

Oh, and if you use the starvation-hibernation exploit, you'll most likely be fine on every map. You're usually able to light a fire at least every second or third day, if you're not consuming 2000-3000kcal per day but only 800 having enough deer killed in decent places should be very doable on every map.

Don't ask me, i'm just speculating and see how it goes from there.

Didn't knew you couldn't harvest fir with a heavy hammer, never tried it only speculated you could.

And are you 100% positive a toolbox is is required to repair one, always thought it could be done without but would consume more time.

It's also possible to have a wolf chase you towards a deer, if you want to do this safely equip a flare or a torch, but it's also possible without.

Is it no longer possible to lit fires ontop of carcasses? Haven't tried it since... long time ago since it's been a while since i had a carcass on a slope i could not lit a fire on.

[Hotzn]

What about the hunting knife? Does it degrade when you use it to fight off wolves? Never checked that. And if it did not degrade, would you allow yourself to use it to kill wolves?

[Hatchet]

What about the hunting knife? Does it degrade when you use it to fight off wolves? Never checked that. And if it did not degrade, would you allow yourself to use it to kill wolves?

No as knives are limited in quantity

I'll start a game someday soon to see what i can do and what i can't do.

[crimeo]

Does the lantern's sparker work without kerosene in it? The tiny flashes of light would be plenty useful still if so.

@Hatchet, the knife is fine based on the reason behind this challenge, if you're only using it in a way that never causes it to degrade.

Also, crow feathers are infinite. Not very useful but on the list.

Snares are absolutely fine and a major staple item if the point is "what could be done in an indefinitely long game?" Reclaimed wood not being natural is irrelevant if that's the reason, because snare usage does not use it up.

[LucidFugue]

Does the lantern's sparker work without kerosene in it? The tiny flashes of light would be plenty useful still if so.

Nah, you just get the standard "do-donk" noise and a message saying it has no kerosene.

[Dirmagnos]

Snares are absolutely fine and a major staple item if the point is "what could be done in an indefinitely long game?" Reclaimed wood not being natural is irrelevant if that's the reason, because snare usage does not use it up.

Of course its relevant. Reclaimed wood is in limited quantity in the world and that was one of the prerequisite for the challenge.

[crimeo]

Of course its relevant. Reclaimed wood is in limited quantity in the world and that was one of the prerequisite for the challenge.

The challenge was variously described as "nothing of limited quantity" and then later on "supposed to simulate playing the game for indefinite amounts of time as a thought experiment."

These are not the same concepts, and in fact conflict with one another. Snares being an example of something that cannot be included by one explanation and must be included by the other. I was assuming the more recent explanation took precedence. But if not, then okay, the concept needs clarifying then, as the rules are ambiguous with both explanations up at once.