Drifter Man

34 minutes ago, Ruruwawa said:

For me it's hacksaw > knife > arrowheads > hatchet.   I think the biggest factor in favor of a hatchet is it's effectiveness against wolves in a struggle.  I made one in my current game because of HRV and I don't regret it... I stumbled into a pair of wolves in the fog and lived to tell the tale!  Hatchet really does seem to get the wolf to break off the attack earlier than knife does.  And now I have a wolf coat. 

Congratulations. I've managed to avoid struggles but in case it should come to that, I prefer to rely on the hammer, based on @Timber Wolf's meticulous research. Or am I making a mistake? Of course, you forfeit the coat, but I prefer saving my own... coat.

@Stone, good read. Any tips for more outdoor bedrolls? One can be in the cave at the Mystic River picnic area in PV, but that's a long way to go.

12 hours ago, Stone said:

Day 3 Rise early, Wolves still about. Forge knife. Harvest softshell for cloth. Forge hatchet. Regret trading the Softshell for hatchet.

Interesting choice of priorities. What do other interlopists use the improvised tools for? For me, knife is needed for crafting, but on Day 3 it is still at least a few days before you can think of making a bow, and you didn't mention making arrowheads. And again for me, hatchet is only good for clearing scrub brush obstacles in the Hushed River Valley. Otherwise it's better to go without it altogether, considering that:

• it's heavy
• carcasses can be processed with a hacksaw, which is lighter, more easily found and maintained
• chopping firewood outdoors doesn't seem like a practical proposition on Interloper

Good luck!

1 hour ago, TheEldritchGod said:

In celebration of reaching day 500.

But... who is attending to your customers at Quonset?

8 hours ago, Pillock said:

(And by the way, I've never understood what our character is actually doing when we 'harvest' a spent torch into a stick. If a torch is a burning stick that you pull from a fire, then when the flame goes out it is... a stick! What actually happens to it during the 2 minutes of tapping-noises?)

Magic

Yes - a torch pulled from a fire does not last longer than the branch did, but it can be extinguished and used later for 1-match firestarting. That's the difference.

I'm now using a self-imposed rule that a torch pulled from a fire cannot be re-lit. Once the flame is out, it's out, which makes the torch work the same as a branch. I do not apply this rule to the torches I found or crafted, which can still be used repeatedly re-lit, including for 1-match fires.

One torch costs 3 sticks, 1 cloth and 0.1 L lamp oil to craft. Lamp oil used to be non-renewable and quite rare, which is not the case anymore. Cloth is non-renewable but practically unlimited - you can get hundreds of pieces from curtains and furniture, although early in the game you may experience a shortage. So I'm not inclined to think we need rags as a new category.

In fact if the brand were reintroduced at this point, astute interlopists^TM might start off with making a crafted torch to get those 1-match fires, as one of the first things to do.

I agree with @Hotzn, the ability to pull torches from fires that can be extinguished and re-lit at will with a single match, and then used to start a new fire, devalues matches and the firestarting skills of the character.

The brand, which appeared briefly for a few releases, was the perfect solution in my opinion. It burned for 30 minutes unless blown out, and during those 30 minutes it could be used to scare off wolves, light your way (not particularly effective in either role though) or start another fire. However, it could not be saved for later use. I also regret that the brand was abandoned in favor of the torch again.

On 30/10/2017 at 4:14 AM, Timber Wolf said:

The Old Bear!

He likes you too, considering all the high-fives and big bear hugs he's giving you

3 hours ago, Timber Wolf said:

Let's see how a super-human Astrid does against the wolf.

The results are much better than for the human Astrid. This could encourage people to use clicking scripts to emulate superhuman powers...

I'm not too happy that the outcome depends on such a dumb factor like clicking speed. But they can't include a full-scale wolf-wrestling simulator in the game, so I'll have to live with it.

Very dangerous business, fighting wolves in Interloper!

You must feel weary now

So that's an average of 18.4% condition loss with 26% protection (based on 100 tests) compared to 22% condition loss with no protection (based on 20 tests, in the OP), all with hatchet.

But I put the numbers from the first table in this topic into excel and calculated an average of 26.7% condition loss instead of 22%... can you check how you calculated that average?

If my average is correct, it would mean a reduction in average condition loss by 31% with clothes.

On Interloper, I "fought" the inevitable cabin fever risk by passing time outside of Mountaineer's Hut back wall where the fire could still be felt. Yes, it was absurd.

54 minutes ago, Troxism said:

but I don't think anyone cares to read an essay and it's wayyyy off topic

It was off topic, but I did care to read and learned quite a bit from your insights.

If reduction of damage scales linearly with protection, as I would expect, the result with clothes should be about 16-17. It is possible that 20 attempts didn't capture this precisely.

Maybe that damage with clothes is also more consistent in that it prevents large condition loss as in attempt No. 14.

I'm not saying you should do more tests  You've done more than enough. Just saying that more numbers might reveal the exact trends.

Great work!

32 minutes ago, Timber Wolf said:

They never died on the spot and all ran off.

That's interesting. It then makes little sense to use anything but hatchet if you have it. Thanks for the data - they sure took a lot of work, and very useful.

I think they are pretty impressive!

Did the wolf always lose? And do you have an idea how many were killed on the spot?

Also, was your character fully rested?

For me it is the peace, the feeling of solitude, and the fact I am not rushed to do anything (pilgrim mode). I choose my own pace, I create my own story.