UTC-10

The game has its inconsistencies that seem to be related to how the scene was set up. I am in at Thomson's Crossing and in a number of spots there are things that [should] be breakable but are not. Metal pails for one. I understand that some of this is because the scene we see often is a sort of a painting hence we cannot move the plates, cups, etc., from tables and counters. Things we can interact with were placed there. I have often lamented that the obvious planks leaning against the Camp Office could not be broken into reclaimed wood, among other things in the game. I would presume that burned-out torches are just that burned out so have no further fuel value. A decision was made that it has no further use as a torch so to get some use from it one has to harvest a stick from it. If spending two minutes to harvest a stick from a burned out torch is too long and easier just to toss it into a fire then one does without the benefit of that stick. I think I figured out one part of that anomaly. At Log Sort there were the log rafts and it was one time easy to step up and cross them and then it was a struggle and then it became easy again (about time of episode 3). I had the idea that I could put a campfire in the lee of the logs to shield them from the wind then I discovered there was an invisible force plane (that incidentally prevents placing the campfire next to the log raft) that was an easily traversable slope onto and off the log raft. I suspect that is why the 2x4 board or railroad track or 3 inch high snow bank can stop us dead in our tracks as the devs did not go through the whole game and put these little ramps over all instances of these "insurmountable" slopes. I am still not happy that it happens but maybe better understand why.

Now if only harvesting charcoal from a fire, while having nothing already in hand, would put the charcoal into my inventory automatically instead of forcing me to do the "put it away" action. A QoL thing as it can be pretty irritating though it is not a big thing.

I do recall that throwing a stone at a wolf that is busy doing something else like feeding is completely ignored. It probably does not fall in to the parameters of the wolf AI that something is hitting me (unless using a lethal weapon) when its busy with more important things like gobbling up the animal meat. Since I play Pilgrim trying to check whether "aiming" a stone has the same effect as aiming a bow or firearm, can be problematic. I may give it a try just to see. I dislike giving out incorrect information.

I don't think the game differentiates what a character is using when aiming. Aiming is aiming. Stone, revolver, rifle, or bow, it does not matter. The intent probably was to forestall the wolf standing still while the character aims a bow, revolver or rifle at them. OTOH, the act of aiming can provoke the wolf to actually attack. I seem to recall that occurring to me when in the Winter's Embrace event which was in Voyager mode.

We should not equate what the game terms "Master Gunsmith" with skilled, experienced real world gunsmiths who have workshops for their craft. So far our "skill" is related to fixing firearms on a milling machine, casting generic bullets, mixing gunpowder, and reloading ammunition with no need for primers (certainly all simplification decisions by the devs). We lack the kinds of materials, machinery and tools we might expect a real gunsmith would use to fashion a workable firearm from scratch. That said, the devs can by fiat say "you can craft a firearm" and work out the implementation but that would undercut the premise of what was the unplanned game difficulty called Interloper.

About a year-old pics of a sleeping bear and a dead bear. There were differences in posture between sleeping and dead. Always be careful. Pilgrim play so I can get close to a sleeping bear. The dead one ignored me. 🙂

1) Odd Behavior Two sets of four water purification tablets, 34% and 36% condition in drawer work bench in Quonset Garage. Tablets moved one by one to backpack inventory, four tablets ostensibly same condition show up as one, one, and two tablets, all showing the same condition. Tablets were moved back to drawer, which unaccountably then combined them according to their condition, then moved to backpack inventory using the Move All to Inventory. I had to use the work bench drawer because the first aid kit I originally had them in had a lot of other stuff that I did not want to move to inventory. 2) Odd Decay [Same day] Left Quonset Garage and walked up to Abandoned Mine (aka Cinder Hills Mine), through the mine to the Pleasant Valley side. Was going to leave the tablets there then discovered their condition had changed to 20% and 17%. Another four tablets taken a few days earlier which had been about 30% at the Quonset Garage had decayed to 13%. The Odd Behavior is an inconvenience. The Odd Decay is relatively more serious since once the tablets get to Ruined (0% condition) they become useless unless I find other tablets that would allow me to rejuvenate them. Have fun figuring this out. 👍 Thanks.

Yes, harvesting the meat fully to stop the rapid decay when it remains on the carcass is standard and being unable to carry any significant portion of it, given that one has gear and clothing, is also standard. I would harvest the meat in 10 kilo batches and drop them in separate piles away from the carcass (for organization purposes) then try taking things as my weight capacity allowed back to base. I recently started using quartering which - a bear takes 2 hours - yields up to 8 quartering bags, the bear hide, and the guts. Being in Pilgrim I can manage 2 bags at most unless the character gets me angry where I might take a third bag and hobble slowly back to base. Quartering bags would be half meat and half "bone" so still has to be harvested for the meat but that can be done at base. How fast quartering bags (and their contents) decay depends on who you ask but it has some value.

The short answer is no. The longer answer would be that food poisoning is generally a small number (other people's subjective view on that notwithstanding). So you can get food poisoning but it is not (imo) a big risk. Of course, if concerned that one may get the brass ring, one might eat sketchy food just before bedtime so if it does happen, it can be treated and then the rest of the treatment (sleep ten hours) won't get too much in the way. You can get credit for "cooking" and get hot food as a result but not affect the chance of food poisoning.

The December 5 update (regardless of whether the DLC was purchased or not) affected the survival mode save game process so the pre-update saves while not wiped out could no longer be accessed except in the Time Capsule (Steam). It was not the DLC or expansion areas that caused the save game process to be updated. That update was going to happen. I might speculate that if not for this save game process update that we might have been able to continue with all of our old save games into TftFT. The changes to the save game process did seem to speed up saving the game with no momentary hitch as the game finalizes the save. So there was some improvement. Anyway, so any save game started post-update but before buying the DLC should be fine is my guess.

All I know is that the bears in Coastal Highway bleed out and die - the one that frequents the Waterfront Cottages area and the one near the Coastal Townsite (I did it twice) - and this is with the new run the update forced me to start. All I can otherwise say is that it can take quite a while for a bear to bleed out.

Thanks for reminding me. I forgot about this. I went up the road from Log Sort and went through the transition from Coastal Highway to Ravine. No problems. I went across the railroad trestle and mapped a ways then returned to Coastal Highway to get back to what I had been doing. Definitely no problems with the transition. I was even able to map out the Train Unloading area trailer (Coastal Highway) which, for some unknown reason did not show up before. Probably needed to step a foot to one side to get it or something. I had been making trips through Cinder Hills Mine to move stuff from the Coastal Highway side to the Pleasant Valley side and had no problems on any of those.

An ersatz and expendable form of fire barrel. Because it is consumed by the fire, it would not be permanent. The use of a section of log would probably make it somewhat not casually portable. It can make use of crafted line from gut (crafted line does not burn in this instance) in its crafting. A hatchet or hacksaw would be needed to craft. How long it would last, would depend on implementation decisions as it might have a specific time limit i.e., 2 hours then it goes out regardless since the log was consumed or it might be a one-time use for a maximum of one or two hours. Harvesting of the Canadian Candle could yield one piece of wood or a few sticks plus some charcoal (dev implementation decision). The base stock would be obtained by deciding whether the character wants a Log or Pieces of Wood from a tree limb. For limbs that yield 3 pieces the character can obtain one log in lieu of those pieces. For larger limbs that yield 5 pieces, the character can obtain two logs in lieu of those pieces. Crafting The Canadian Candle is crafted by splitting the log into 4 or 8 pieces, clearing out an interior cavity, cutting a vent hole in the side, then reassembling the pieces, tied together with crafted line, which the end (making assertion that it would be smooth enough) then serves as a platform for cooking, water making, with the body of the log serving as fuel and a wind shield. It has one nominal cooking surface that requires a pot to use though there might be accessories like a grill to substitute for it. Recycled cans (two) can be placed on the top beside the fire hold and will melt snow at 2 the normal duration. Whether the Canadian Candle can be extinguished and moved to another location then relit is a dev implementation decision. Game implementation matters and I may be reaching about what it can do but it did look interesting in this video on Kent Survival channel on youtube Swedish Torches - 3 styles of 1 log fire .

I should make the trek from Coastal Highway to Ravine just to see if the problem you have appears. I have been up to the tunnel but not tried to cross into Ravine because I decided that I would go through Pleasant Valley. I better check. I have already been through Cinder Hills Mine (which BTW is reflected in the journal as Abandoned Mine) to Pleasant Valley and no trouble.

I had thought that Ash Canyon might be a more appropriate location for that kind of cable-way if only to deliver moderate amounts of cargo. I think that it would have had to have been much more substantial if people/miners were to ride across the chasms between the cliffs. I did think that there should have been more ruins in Ash Canyon like stair ways or hoist systems for more complete depiction of how one got to particular locations like Homesteader's Respite and that collapsed sort of picnic and storage area near Angler's Den Cabin. Access to Miner's Folly was fine for adventuring but not so good for an actual supposedly functional camp (and don't get me started on missing things at Miner's Folly like where was the stove and kitchen that cooked for all the miners or how incidental things like food supplies were moved to the camp?). But that's just me.

I recall from commentary from Hinterland that the mix and occurrence of weapons was changed to make revolvers more likely and rifles less likely. More or less. There was also some mention of changing the instances of rifle guaranteed spawns in a region. This would likely be tuned given some experience with how it worked in the game. I know that starting from Desolation Point and to Coastal Highway in Pilgrim the first rifle I found was the Barb's rifle variant in Coastal Highway. So far the ordinary hunting rifle has not turned up. Got lots of revolver and rifle ammunition.

So when you tried to place the campfire, it was green and just did not go into place or it was red and the game said "invalid location" or "too windy to place a fire here"? Off-hand I do not recall if another reason the game may give for not placing a campfire is "too close to another object (even there was no obvious object to be close to)"? I remember "too windy to place a fire here" when I wanted to place a campfire on top of a large rock (under the Fishing Village dock in Coastal Highway) and the game said "nope, nice try". 😄

I tend to lay campfire trails (magnifying lens, tinder and a stick, though having the badge makes the tinder superfluous other than for role-playing purposes) which is one way to do something useful with the campfires (they don't go away over time) that can be seen in pretty bad weather (blizzard, dense fog, most nights) rather than wander around aimlessly. I play Pilgrim so predators would not be a problem. Be careful and good luck.

Preset campfires do do the same thing on occasion, although this was all pre-update. I presume that how the game handles landscape issues has a hand in this. It still seems to happen though not quite so egregiously as much.

No they sink into the snow. I have had a few campfires (over time so not in front of me) sink down until only a tiny nub of it would be visible and that would allow a fire to be lit but because the cooking surfaces were under the snow nothing could be cooked. These are from a few years ago. Taken in the baseyard of Carter Hydro dam. The spot was a nice mostly wind-protected spot.

I still use tinder plugs though not religiously. I still carry ten of them and use them generally for "serious" fires not my trail-marking campfires. All for the roleplay. I used to use them for trail markers, on occasion, but with Lost and Found sweeping up ALL of my trailmarkers - charcoal, cattail heads, tinder plugs - I gave up on that mostly and resort to campfires which remain immobile though they sometimes slowly sink into beneath the snow.

Normally when camping out, wouldn't a person put some kind of insulating layer between whatever they were going to lay their bedroll down on? Putting the bedroll directly on the ice might have been deemed too cold for game purposes of resting. Now that could mean that eventually maybe - talking DLC stuff - some kind of insulating blanket or pad might be implemented to let the bedroll be placed on ice even if not really advisable most of the time.

Definitely, cannot place a bedroll on ice. Invalid location to put item is the game's response. I didn't doubt the OP but have to check for myself. I can only speculate that the ice is too flat for the bumpy underside of the bedroll. Just like a seemingly flat plank is incompatible with the curved surface of a Coho Salmon!

I do know that you cannot build a campfire on weak ice. I was marking out the extent of weak ice around the ice holes in Keeper's Pass South. It was actually helpful news to me. Interesting that the OP couldn't deploy bedrolls on ice. I am in Coastal Highway and have both the bedroll and bearskin bedroll. I will have to give it a try as I don't think I tried that before.

I had an interesting episode with the bear that frequents Waterfront Cottages in Coastal Highway. I pegged the bear with an arrow then fled inside the fireplace house. Came out (I am in Pilgrim so that was safe) and began to follow the bear. Like most I would like the blood trail to be a larger (easier to see) or more informative (i.e. minimal bleed, one drop, serious bleed, two drops, and really major bleed, three drops which relate to the bleed out of the animal). I was a bit behind the bear so I was surprised at how persistent the blood trail was compared to previous experience. The tracks had disappeared but I could still follow the blood drops. Although the bear was following the road, mostly, so that limited where it could go, I could follow the blood trail up until it left the road and headed home at which point I just observed that black mass moving across the ice. I do not know if the apparent persistence of the blood trail was a change, just chance, or my imagination. I won't depend on it happening again, but this time it helped. A tracking skill that helped with tracks and blood would be helpful. It might possibly have levels up to 5 for legendary tracker or something like that.