Doc Feral

Anyway, if you go onto one of the big rocks near the river and light a fire you'll feel warmer, and when you shoot the moose causing it to charge you it will stop a few paces away and turn around exposing its huge flank.

I think it's the area near the cat tails roughly at 1750x 2100y, I remember exiting from the side door and going left. anyway, that's the river, look for a swampy area with a big fallen tree.

If you leave the barn and head for the river there's a swampy area not far from the bridge. I found one there. And there's a dirty trick to be used with the rocks.

The Shaman Challenge. Light a fire (place a torch if indoors), draw a symbol with coal, stones or tinder and leave a ritual offering of food and water near every corpse, and place a wolf skin under him/her.

Cool, I missed it.

Funny, my plan was to light several big campfires at the top of the lighthouse and then run down to take a picture and pretend it's working.

Quick, somebody call Martin Rosen!

Surviving another day is epic. My colleagues: "my character finally found the Oversized sword of flamboyant titanchopping that gives vampiric strike when paired with the Armour of crimson imperviousness!" Me: "my character managed to craft a bow, four arrows and I have enough wolf pelts for a jacket!"

Have you considered answering more often to the Wishlist? Some "maybe" "yes" or "no way" would avoid the countless cloned topics about cougars, candles, rabbitskin headgear and so on, for good or for ill.

When I end up clobbering a wolf with an hatchet I patch myself up if needed and then mend the most damaged clothing item, which is a way to pass time. I usually see the wolf running around blurred as I work and then find it dead. A good way to pass time is doing something useful, of course if no other menaces are around.

It's an alphabetical order thingy after all, "Torch" comes after "MaTches" and "maGnifier" before them. In italian they're "torcia", "fiammiferi" and "lente" so I have the same issue searching for the torch but the magnifier is not on top. An even simpler solution would be to allow the choice for different arrangements to the menu. z-a alphabetical order would surely help, such as increasing condition (torches usually are low and matches always on 100%). It wouldn't always help (magnifiers are random and flares instantly switch from 100 to 0 when totally spent) but better then nothing.

If you play at stalker or higher level (or the highest in Wintermute) and you are chopping up a wolf or bear for food make the largest pieces available. Yes, I've said it. The risk of parasites is based on the number of pieces you eat, not the weight. So you'd better eat a big chunk instead of two or three munchies. On the other hand, for the purpose of harvesting and kitchen practice you'd better make the tiniest slices you can of deer, moose and rabbit And while meat is cooking, if you're in the open with a big store of sticks and tinder, you should pull torches from the fire and light some single-stick fires around you. Go on like this, pulling more torches and re-lighting fires, you'll rack up experience for fire without using matches. And remember there's no skill advancement in Wintermute!

It would greatly help even when you have a wolfish emergency but still care about your resources.

Chewing the burnt parts.

In my mind I'm already dismissing the idea as uselessly complicated, but we could make single-use short duration torches sticking a tinder bundle on a stick. More light and a bit longer duration than a match, it could be worth two or three attempts at lighting a fire and couldn't be extinguished (except by wind) and of course not lit again. Just another way to give more dignity to tinder bundles.

I wasn't around when the "brand" existed. It seems my idea for a pulled or almost spent torch was for it to become a brand. For cloth, I'm just saying that it's an important and non-renewable resource, and that since a baseball cap and a pair of jeans gives you the same amount I'd suppose there should be some leftover which isn't good for repairs but could be used for making torches without wasting "good" cloth. My point: making torches consumes a precious multi-purpose non-renewable resource. That's one of the few cases I'd go against my obsession for simplicity and recommend adding a new resource type.

"Torch exploit" is right, I think. I was nine years old when we had a fireplace installed at home, and I soon figured out using a lit candle to light a fire was better than wasting matches. By the way, using more tinder bundles instead of more matches for multiple attempts would make tinder bundles important even when your skill level says you don't need them. Picking a flaming stick from a fire and calling it a torch is a bit stretched, but even the best campfire torch starts at about 40% condition. So it could be ruled that a torch at 40% condition or less will keep burning, but once extinguished it can't be lit again. So we will be more inclined to make torches and still use them to light fires, but an almost spent torch will become no more than a stick. Making a torch is costly: cloth is one of those precious non-renewable resources. Not to mention that the cloth harvesting process is quite inefficient. A whole sweater gives you a single cloth, that's sad, but if we accept the explanation that only the largest straight parts can be used for repairs what happens to the rest? It could become a quantity of "rags" based on the weight of the item, and those could be used to make torches, like cloth used in failed repairs that somehow vanishes in warp space. Even used bandages could turn to "rags" after resting. I personally wouldn't care if there's dried blood on a rag if I'm going to soak it in oil and set it on fire. I think even rabbit fur once soaked in oil would make a great torch. It's the same question again and again, add different categories of stuff to the game to make it more believable, or keep it simple and close an eye if something is weird?

When you're in horrible places such as Forlorn Muskeg don’t be surprised when a crack in the ice appears under your feet. You slip out of your depth and out of your mind with your fear flowing out behind you as you claw the thin ice. And apart from awesome song quotes I was about to say you CAN'T play tough thinking that taking a dive or two in freezing water is not so bad if only you can reach the other shore and light a pyre. When you get out of water you go BACKWARDS. No matter how many times you try, you won't make it through by swimming. Thin ice can't be crossed.

If you let your 6 years old son play don't watch too closely. My son was thrashing the mouse so wildly I almist threw up from looking at the screen...

It's a videogame, so the best weapon is the hatchet. It deals the more damage, and the wound is always fatal, while I've seen wolves attacking me again after being knifed. Wolf coat is easier to obtain and to repair. Both are supposed to have a chance to scare off wolves. Bear coat is heavier, warmer, gives more protection, probably scarier, but good luck repairing it.

Always ready to laugh about myself. I died by wolf attack just near the train wreckage in Mystery Lake. I tried to flee into the wagon but I got stuck in a branch when trying to step on the fallen tree trunk, I panicked and couldn't manage to go around it. Embarassing. Not death but ridiculous. I decided to start a new Wintermute game, this time at the highest difficulty level. Feeling all cool because now I knew stockpiling wolf furs and sapling is pointless and all that. As soon as I rip the piece of metal off my hand I have a brilliant idea: stand near one of the burning wrecks for warmth. But my temperature doesn't rise. I don't remember it's the beginning of the game and so it's just a one-track tutorial. Maybe I just have to get closer. And closer. And OW, HOT HOT HOT! So Will proudly marched towards Milton in his boxer shorts and socks. I started thinking Grey Mother would gun him down on sight, then remembered she's blind.

Not all fires are created equal. You light a fire in the open, throw a couple of logs to make it last three hours and happily settle down to chop a carcass? You still risk a cruel and unusual death by hypothermia. It just happened to me. Always check if your temperature is actually going up, your clothes can make a lot of difference. And a bunch of sticks may generate more heat than a single log, for the same duration.

Italy. From the foggy and windless plains of Modena, Emilia.

I'd recommend always carrying 4-5 bandages, even if someone wrote 2-3 before. The reason is that with a knife or hatchet, and a good deal of fast clicking, you can survive a fight with a pack of even three wolves, if you're unlucky like me and they always gang up. But surviving an epic battle and dying from blood loss is disappointing. Sometimes a wolf attack will cause a bleeding wound, sometimes not, and just today for the first time I've suffered two different bleedings from one attack. Big bad wolf. So I'd rather be safe than sorry (and usually dead) and be generous with first aid stuff. Antiseptic (which is heavier) is not so urgent, you can always use antibiotics or mushrooms later if the infection sets in.