Doc Feral

My first time, I started thinking too much. "Hmm, this bridge is half destroyed and all shaky, it surely is impossible to just walk upon it, let's search for a spot to tie my climbing rope for safety" and I proceeded to fumble around until I fell down.

It's Maynard's basement, Zed and the Gimp are on their way.

2 hours ago, earthy said:

i think you've missed that different tools are better in different situations. for instance, a hacksaw is the fastest for harvesting meat if the carcass is frozen, while knife is faster if the carcass is still fresh.

 

edit: just saw what you said about level 5 harvesting. i think that does mess things up. 

I just started a voyageur mapping run, so I'll do the comparisons at different levels.

My current Stalker game has 130-something days and level 5 in fire, cooking, harvesting, archery. Leveled up to 5 (77 shots/ 70 hits) in archery with my first ever instant kill of a bear.

Fishing 2 (54kgs), rifle 3 (never fired a shot, just read books), sewing 3 (80 repairs)

Well, the main advantage of quartering is with large animals and long-term planning. If you play on custom settings which won't allow you to live long enough to cure a skin it's pointless. But having discovered that quartering can be stopped and resumed (I didn't know it before making these tests) makes it safer.

And that's with the improvised hatchet.

I admit counting nematodes and copepods was slightly more exciting than this, but research is research. I leave to someone else the amusement of making the calculations, such as the different combinations of stuff and the quantity beyond which quartering starts being really useful.

From what I've seen walking back and forth, a bear quarter doesn't stink as much as the meat it yelds when harvested. Not sure about smaller ones. I forgot comparing stinkpuffs, and I'm not eager to try it at the moment.

Sorry, it seems at level 5 harvesting it doesn't matter if a carcass is warm or frozen. Hacksaw.

And meat. I give up, I'm going to play again just to see what happens with the hacksaw. AND with a frozen carcass.

Skin. Again, I checked both deer and bunny. Skinning with an hatchet is quite unpractical. I regret leaving the hacksaw behind, it would have been interesting.

About guts. Tried with a deer. I compared it with a rabbit and it's the same, so the species doesn't matter. Sorry, I left my hacksaw in the Dam, but we already know it's slower than the hatchet.

Next mission, since I forgot to do it: compare harvesting times for parts (skin, gut, 1kg meat) and amount of stinkpuffs for carrying quarters or pieces.

(Of course I went back to that bear and quartered it leaving nothing)

8 hours ago, peteloud said:

You make it hard for yourself.    Who needs 34kg of meat and 10 bits of gut.

Be more realistic and butcher 10kg of meat and leave the gut.  It saves a lot of time.

 

Crafting fur clothes uses plenty of guts, repairing them uses guts, making fishing lines, bows and traps use guts, don't understimate guts, no guts no glory.

And as roleplaying would have it, when I manage to kill such a mighty beast I imagine dancing around the fire, painting my face with ash and blood and thanking the fallen animal for granting me life saving supplies, so I feel bad wasting them.

2 hours ago, U47 said:

Also some thing to check is start quartering and push the ESC button to stop the process, then continue to quarter. Does the time restart or does is continue where you stopped?

It works like crafting, I tried just now. If you cancel the action the requested time decreases but you won't get partial results. Half time doesn't mean you pick half of the guts and three meat bags.

By the way, quartering is a fixed-time process. So when harvesting skill is still low, should a bladed tool be available, it may be the best option since it allows to relocate a whole carcass and start safely working on it. Remember all my screenshots are from a level 5 harvester.

I told you I was going after something chubby. Quartering a bear takes two hours, but chopping everything on the spot is a nightmare. Guts take much time, and there's plenty of them. This was my first one-shot of a bear with an arrow, it died in a weird position.

By the way, it seems that as freezing sets in the hatchet is less penalized than the knife and gains the advantage. I play Stalker so I don't use the hacksaw, I don't know. I carried one in this hunt for science's sake.

Wolf, quartering takes 1 hour, like deer.

Since the "moose hunting" topic was going off the tracks I thought it would be interesting to analize the differences in time between quartering and harvesting. I wento out with hatchet, knife and hacksaw and downed a deer. I didn't take the improvised hatchet and I don't have an improvised knife, but let's just say they're slower than the professional versions.

As we all agree about, the hunting knife is your best friend. The hatchet is slower, the hacksaw even worse, bare hands are terrible. I'm level 5 in harvesting. Quartering a deer has a fixed time of an hour, knife, hatchet or hacksaw. The cost in calories varies according to time, not tools or activity.

Now I'll look for something heavier, bears are easier to find than moose. Wish me good luck.

I hated so much the repetitive sneaking and hiding that when I finally laid my bloodthirsty hands on the spear I roared "Blood for the blood god! Skulls for the throne of Khorne!" and impaled the bugger. Seriously, I had no trouble bashing the mouse button, but I'm a fast clicker.

Right beside the spear there's a convenient corner you can occupy to seriously limit the bear's options, I stood there. When you're in a hole the bear walks around, you can usually see when it's far away. If I remember correctly there's even a leaning tree near the spear, I didn't try but maybe it's possible to run on it to hide once more.

A glowing waterfall... a bit weird but fascinating.

Any chance to have the burning flare or torch already in hand come up as the default option when lighting a fire?

Wolves have dignity. Even an almost dead limping wolf won't let you simply come near enough to pluck your arrow from its butt and get away with it. Yes, I've tried. It will turn on you with its dying breath.

From what I've observed wolves (not sure about other animals) slow down when they're almost dead, and at that point they haven't got enough blood to leave a trail. There's a "transition zone" when they don't bleed nor leave footprints, and that's how they "disappear". Then they start dragging along and leave many more prints, and then they fall. The messy part is when they stop bleeding and slow down, it's easy to lose track.

Any chance to see a way to simplify the handling of large numbers of items? A hotkey to pick up everything in sight and range, or making so that items dropped in a bunch remain in a bunch... There are complaints and pleads about this almost weekly.

I've found that too a while ago.

Anyway, a scary but beautiful night in good ol' Muskeg

and I've learned something: the flashlight stops wolves and that's it. It doesn't scare them off, that only happened in 4don. So it may be good if you can back off to a shelter, but not if you're in the open. Oh, well, hatchet time!

On 12/8/2017 at 10:31 PM, Scyzara said:

Just as a sidenote: You can easily check if a bear location is inhabited by checking if there are bones in front of the potential bear cave. If bones are lying around, the cave is inhabited - if not, you know the bear has spawned elsewhere.

Never figured that out, interesting.

I agree that in story mode spawn rates are different (wolves sure are plentiful).

Harvesting a carcass is the fastest way to make an animal respawn. Leftovers disappear in a few hours.

Some spawn locations may have different animals. You may have rabbits once, then deer, then wolves, then a wolf eating rabbits... you'll always find something but you don't know what.

Hollow trees!

They aren't very common but sometimes you may run into one. And they're not a new addition. They work perfectly as natural fireplaces, you can light a long lasting fire in them and camp safely without worrying about wind. And wolves.