Doc Feral

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Everything posted by Doc Feral

  1. 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.
  2. Sorry, it seems at level 5 harvesting it doesn't matter if a carcass is warm or frozen. Hacksaw.
  3. And meat. I give up, I'm going to play again just to see what happens with the hacksaw. AND with a frozen carcass.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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)
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. "Astrid, I told you that slope was dangerous! Now look at those four sprains you've got!" I got a sprained wrist walking on the Forestry Lookout balcony. I convinced myself I slammed a hand against the railing because it was night.
  13. Any chance to have the burning flare or torch already in hand come up as the default option when lighting a fire?
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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!
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. Unfinished items don't decay. If you have found a comfortable, safe base with an alternative resting place to avoid cabin fever you may go on a crafting rampage. If you want to craft spare clothes you should select the crafting time leaving half an hour or so of unfinished work. This will allow you to store and carry clothes without them self destructing if left alone and to complete them quickly if needed. Don't eat cat tails. I mean, not unless you're really in trouble. Save them for later in the game and for long travels. They never decay, have a decent weight/calories ratio and don't smell. They're the best food to carry with you when you want to move and don't plan to hunt along the way.
  21. Any chance to see Old Bear's Lair as an accessible area in survival mode? It looks great.
  22. Fascinating, I edited after you quoted. Enough of this, let's go back to screenshots.
  23. Spoiler alert It's not a bad idea to begin with, but it's at least three times longer than required. Walk blindly in a tunnel. Find another tunnel. Walk blindly in a tunnel. Find another tunnel. Walk blindly in a tunnel. Find another tunnel. Walk blindly in a tunnel. Find another tunnel. Sneak past the bear. Hide in a hole. Sneak past the bear. Hide in a hole. Sneak past the bear. Hide in a hole. Sneak past the bear. Hide in a hole. Sneak past the bear. Hide in a hole. Sneak past the bear. Hide in a hole. If somehow you managed to do all the sneaking & hiding without being abused to death, finally grab the spear. Fight. Say farewell to the most awesome location ever with the saddening certainty that you'll never see it again and you had no time to enjoy the sight because you had no light source and Old Bear was trying to kill you. I remember when in "Xcom: terror from the deep" a stunned alien would wake up and hide in some corner of a city-sized cruise ship and you had to search for it. It wasn't so stressful.