Doc Feral

On the other hand, carrying some rock-hard frozen meat shouldn't give you scent penalty. And eating a hot steak may actually warm you up.

Bear, for calories, satisfaction and economy. Calories are obvious, and the satisfaction of showing the alpha predator who's really out of scale is great, and then there's the relevant economy factor. One single well placed arrow can get you hearty meals for weeks. Killing a moose is ammo-depleting, other animals give you way less meat. Rabbits are even cheaper, stones are free and a single piece of wood can be recycled indefinitely for snares, but the calories are miserable.

Now THAT's a big-ass rat walking on that beam.

I've just tried it against a blizzard: a campfire in a hollow tree is totally windproof.

Beautiful, warm and welcoming. And it burned through a PV blizzard like a boss. Hollow tree permafires are great.

12kg? Not 120 like me? I really should do something for my compulsive looting and hoarding.

That's what a hollow tree is meant for.

Look, everything the light touches is our... no, wait, that's Pleasant Valley, everything will try to kill you in some creative way.

That's in the opening video.

From what I've noticed in my first struggles, a knife causes small damage, so chances are that the wolf will eventually recover from panic and attack again. It will most lilkely die in the second fight, but may cause more damage. So keep your distance from a stabbed wolf, since bleedout will kill it anyway after a while. I still don't see much difference in struggle duration and outcome, it brobably depends mostly on mouse-bashing and dice rolls. I usually carry an hatchet because it can also chop wood and frozen meat, but sometimes I used a knife but still can't figure out a pattern. As for sharpness, I've used improvised hatchets in sorry condition in struggles, and they were satisfyingly short even when the hatchet broke hitting the wolf's skull. I agree that the hammer scares off wolves quickly, but they'll come back. I remember someone posting about having hammered a wolf to death, but it took at least three rounds.

I extremely hated the thrice-longer-than-needed sneaking and hiding part, the fight was satisfying.

Pleasant Valley is so large you could drop Milton in it and many people wouldn't find it for a while, including myself. Could that building take the place of one of the granary-like large wooden sheds, like that one near the lake?

<Glimpse of a future "Dear players, due to some changes in the following maps we can't guarantee the safety of items stored there, so moving them away may be wise"> <Memories of the emergency evacuation of three "bases" and of carrying everything to a cave and then back again> <Headbutts the wall>

In the Ravine train wreck, a good read for when I'll decide to use a rifle.

To sum it up a little (without throwing in another dozen or so screenshots from more experiments). It started with "what's better, directly harvesting or quartering?" and the answer, as expected, is not so simple. Level 1 harvester. 100% Frozen meat: hacksaw or hatchet, knife. 100% Frozen skin: knife, hatchet, hacksaw. 100% Frozen gut: knife, hatchet, hacksaw. Quarter: it doesn't matter. Tools, frozen or not, it's the same. Warm gut: knife, hatchet, hacksaw, hand. Warm meat: knife, hatchet or hacksaw, hand. Warm skin: knife, hand, hatchet, hacksaw. Improvised knives and hatchets are less effective, so the improvised hatchet loses to the hacksaw when it comes to meat. I've also discovered that a "spawned" ravaged carcass is harder to work on than a "killed" one. It takes more time and/or calories. As the harvesting ability rises the "frozenness" becomes less and less relevant. Level 5 harvester At this level the "frozen" factor is ignored. Knife wins, "true" hatchet is slightly better than hacksaw, improvised hatchet is slightly worse. When it comes to skin and guts, the knife always wins, and the hatchet is better than the hacksaw. If the carcass is warm, skinning by hand is better than using hatchet or hacksaw. As for meat, if it's frozen use hacksaw or hatchet. If it's an improvised hatchet, use the hacksaw. If meat is warm, a knife is the best. Quartering: useful to accelerate respawning because the carcass disappears (DON'T quarter wolves), it's really effective on large animals when you need guts, since skinning and completely gutting a bear or moose takes way more time than quartering. Creates heavy meatbags which can be carried to a warm and safe place and then sliced to bits. It's a lengthy process but it can be interrupted and resumed. Like crafting, there's no "half done", you need to finish the whole process. That said, I'll continue quartering moose and bears.

HARVESTING LEVEL 1 Fresh meat, the knife wins hands down, and the hacksaw is clearly horrible for skinning and gutting where precision is needed.

HARVESTING LEVEL 1 Quartering becomes significantly harder with a frozen carcass. I didn't take multiple screenshots but I've seen that tools don't matter in this case.

HARVESTING LEVEL 1 That's with a frozen carcass. Still have to find an hatchet, but when it comes to meat the hacksaw is faster. One thing I can't understand, why is gutting a wolf different from gutting a deer? More calories, see? I don't think it's the difference in hacksaw condition, and both were 100% frozen. Maybe a frozen deer is harder than a frozen wolf. The plot thickens.

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.

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.

It does. By the way, if you want to eat wolf make big pieces, if you want to cook it for practice make mincemeat. Risk of parasites is the opposite, it's based on the number of pieces, not weight.