Doc Feral

Yes, the Raven Falls Ravine is a typical vacation spot of mine, to avoid cabin fever and hunt some deer in peace.

That's a nice piece of weirdness. I personally enjoy staying out of reach so they'll ignore me and then killing them as they stop to howl. "Shut up, you filthy mutt!"

Wait, what's that, Santa's village? And then I remember I still had some grudge against the guy in a Coke costume. We all got the wrong present one time or another.

Well, there are so many possible solutions that I don't think it's worth complaining about it. When you harvest meat you usually have decimals. Like your average 1.1 kg rabbit. Select all, deselect till only 0.1 remains and that's it. It works with bigger animals too. You can use the same method to make mincemeat of something to practice cooking or have multiple small pieces to use as decoy. Canceling the harvesting action also works to give even smaller pieces. Or if you eat a steak and it's too much you'll have leftovers. Or you can cancel halfway when harvesting meat. Dropping decoys is a hasty action to avoid trouble, so I don't think it would be fitting to choose a steak from the backpack, cut off a tiny bit, drop it on the ground, put the rest away and move on. Grab something fleshy, get rid of it and take cover.

Practical reasons? The dam. It's in the middle of everything, has plenty of lockers, several workbenches. The only flaws is that the nearest bed is in the trailer across the gate and there's no easily accessible kitchen, so you may end up using campfires shielded by some junk in the front yard. Beautiful places? Camp office, Mountaineer's hut in TWM, maybe the Paradise Meadows or Pleasant Valley farms?

If you shoot a bear with an RPG you'll probably have a critical hit but meat and hide will be ruined.

Random piece of weirdness. I just scored a deadly critical hit on this chubby fellow and the arrow fell of by itself. Or maybe the arrow got it in the throat, the bear started spinning wildly for the pain, the centrifugal force dislodged the arrow and the bear died in a matter of seconds. But then the whole coastal village should be spray-painted red by now...

Are you sure the fist arrow really missed? Didn't the arrow break on impact and fall off, maybe? Or maybe it just ended up under the carcass and you'll have to wait for it to despawn (don't quarter or the arrow is a goner). Did the bear react in some way to the first arrow?

It looks like some kind of pokemon...

Yes, that was the correct way of dealing with this. And it's not like crossing ML and exploring the dam needs much equipment, after all.

I think it was an old option with the "brands", I've read about it but started gaming later. A torch or lit flare will make the wolf keep its distance if you're walking backwards facing it. It's just a way to gain some time when you're heading for a shelter or someplace to jump down. Looks like running with a flaming thing in your hand has a fair chance of scaring off the wolf if surprised (you may jumpscare it hopping onto a ridge). It happened to me once, on stalker and I had normal clothes, no furs.

How can you say that? Have you ever got food poisoning from something (apart from raw meat) at level 5? Was it stated by the devs?

I don't think it's luck. I'm eating plenty of "ruined" food and everything is fine. I'm still convince "processed" count as"cooked". By the way, it also works with meat I cooked at the beginning of the game and abandoned. No parasites, and no poisoning if ruined.

I just tried it. First (then second, and then third) time ever, since I've never tried challenges before. Part 1 was easy, got to the Dam, confused the fatty with a decoy, ran for the gate and locked it inside. Then made a forced march all the way to the Cabin. As a general suggestion, when you leave the Cabin the bear will be in front of you. Don't bother crouching, make a running dash to the right and dive off the cliff. You'll land on a rock ledge, the bear won't be able to reach you, so it will be offended and run away to talk about its troubles to Max. By the way, how does the "hidden content" thingy work?! Anyway, I tried it three times, I'm quite sure that at least 25 bullets reached the target, but it never cared nor bled. So I agree that the challenge is totally broken. Maybe a panzerfaust would be better than this so-called Bearkiller?

You asked for it

Before Redux characters such as Grey Mother and Jeremiah were probably even more interesting. Now Grey Mother has gone a bit too far on the nutty side, and Jeremiah's part was shortened a bit. The cut scene when he opened the trapdoor to access his not-sure-what equipment used to make him look much more important. Anyway, I think Jeremiah still gets my vote. Methuselah is a mystical looking strange guy, but having failed to mention there's an axe wielding freak in the dam he lost my esteem. Hobbs... when he told his story I got more and more convinced he was an useless piece of filth and I made sure to put him out of his misery. Not to mention I didn't want him to get up and kill me in my sleep.

What really makes me go "oh bother" about outdoor fires is that the confusing countdown more than once caused my pots of water to evaporate. I often time the fire to complete a last cooking action and then leave it alone, and if the time stretches I happen to be fooled. I may even have burned moose steaks one or two times.

I like spiders, and anyway they would hardly be detectable. And Canada is not a home to many dangerous spiders, I think. If you think about some creepy crawliness, rats would be more likely and could actually have some relevant in-game effect (oh no they ate my cat tails!)

The cave is the most awesome location I've seen in the game. When I recovered from the traumatic experience of endlessly sneakin' and hidin' I asked about it in a mailbag. I got an ambiguous but not negative answer.

That tree. It's uphill from Three Strikes going in the general direction of Skeeter's ridge, near the (possible) prepper bunker.

That's sad. Now I feel compelled to try again. I had one burning in Pleasant Freeze-your-arse-into-oblivion Valley for days, with several blizzards...

That would be a worthwhile experiment, come on, show some initiative and put your name on it! It's not as insane and pointless as testing if a barricade of multiple campfires can stop a charging bear (sorry @Bronco, my bad), and if things turn bad you can retreat to the tunnel. As for myself, I personally tried a campfire in a hollow tree against a raging blizzard, and it kept burning. On the other hand, the whole topic "Hidden caves" is about finding nameless windproof places, so maybe it already has been covered.

Well, two campfires side by side along a wall are not so horrible and will likely be used many times. On the other hand, I agree that one permanently abandoned in the middle of a river is ridiculously ugly.

Well, most stoves have 1 or 2 slots, campfires use less firewood for the same duration and can be lit with the lens, so outdoor cooking already has its advantages, apart from cabin fever. Massive stoves are rare. I usually simply light a couple of decently sheltered fires to have more slots. The lack of firewood is hardly ever an issue, if you don't totally firget about it. A large campfire with many slot wouldn't be a campfire anymore. More like an outdoor country fair kitchen, you'd need to use many big rocks to form a wall around it, and maybe poles for hanging pots and spit roasting... great for parties, but it would be a mighty crafting project.

I'm the nature loving type but I prefer the role of the predator, even if the lazy type since I don't hunt (it's way too expensive in Italy). By the way, killing a rabbit by snapping its neck is a clean way to take it out. I spent much time in the countryside when I was a kid, and I remember seeing that most farmers used to either swing the rabbit by the hind legs and slam its head against a stony surface, or hold it by the ears and punch it. Oh, the eighties... So no, neck snapping doesn't impress me at all.