UTC-10

Not in Milton/Mountain Town, but in Hushed River Valley I found that Monolith Lake has suitable ice and much of it GREEN. Now if only I could build a tiny log cabin to stay in while hunting and fishing. If it had a small stove to cook and keep warm and dry that would work pretty well.

Two bundles instead of four would work for me. I just found two hours to get the feathers from a two kilogram bird carcass to be excessive (even given I have no experience with defeathering a bird carcass). I would suppose, if it came down to it, that one bundle of feathers for the same time as to get the hide off any other animal would have worked too. Then I could complain about how many ptarmigans I'd have to shoot with fire hardened arrows to get the needed bundles of feathers. 😁

Was watching a video about a Russian who hunts and lives, when out in the wilderness, hunting and fishing, in a small (actually tiny) cabin. He had shot a grouse and as he was talking on the video he was doing something that I realized was he was pulling the feathers off the carcass. Although I think that the length of time to harvest the ptarmigan down feathers was a result of the devs using an existing game mechanic (the removal of an animal's hide) a future tuning of the process for ptarmigans might be a shorter time, maybe significantly shorter time, per bundle of feathers when done by hand and a longer time if one chooses to use a tool like a knife (presumably less efficient). Also pulling down feathers should not require a tool to start if it died due to being stoned or shot by the character. This would seem more realistic though I can foresee that it would require a new mechanic which would have the potential to have bugs and complexity (in the programming) associated with it. Always the possibility of unintended and unknown side effects from this kind of change. Of course this would be obviously favorable to the character since spending almost two hours to collect four [bundles] of feathers from a carcass that is under three kilograms still feels rather excessive. Fifteen minutes a bundle by hand (so an hour to process a ptarmigan carcass for four bundles of feathers) still seems long but I could see it taking that long since one wants to be careful and not damage or destroy what one is trying the harvest. I am reconciled to the existing time to get four bundles of feathers from a single carcass but it could use maybe more thought. 🐦🖐️

@piddy3825 wasn't referring to your OP. But after reading your OP more closely I can see where you might think I was. 😅

About the only downside I would see to boiling away the water to get salt is the damage done to the container - pot, skillet, recycled can - in the process. Certainly pots and skillets can be repaired with scrap metal and a tool kit and recycled cans would be notable by how many end up laying around. I do not think that boiling away fresh water would result in any reasonable salt so letting or having a container of water boil away would not help. If one seeks workable salt residues after doing so then the water would have to be sea water (or very salty water) to begin with.

Run across rabbit carcasses that had 0.0 meat on them then they disappeared when picked up. The game should not let you pick them up, but relatively recently has allowed that then it updates and the carcass is gone. I was surprised to find a deer carcass (once) where all the meat was gone but I could still harvest the hide and guts. Normally a wolf, when it finishes eating, should cause the game to class the carcass as "nothing to harvest", as it has no interest in the hide and guts, but didn't that time. I attributed those disappearing rabbit carcasses as the game not updating until I came along and picked up the carcass.

I find the travois sufficiently functional to be worth having and using even given its operational quirks and limitations. Like how, at the approach to the radio tower and transmitter that space is too narrow for the travois. 🚧 ✋ I did think I should have been able to get closer but Grey Mother's House was not far away. At 1 kg it is light enough that I carry it packed into inventory for use as needed.

I was thinking for four "feathers" each taking 28 minutes by hand or 21 minutes with a knife (Level 5 carcass harvesting)? I wasn't thinking bundles of feathers so why not a stupid tool to get a feather faster??? I have no experience plucking feathers so it was a problem to think I could harvest an animals (moose, bear, deer, wolf, rabbit) hide in 21/28 minutes but not a bird. I still have no experience with plucking feathers but the idea of a bundle of feathers taking a while each time makes it seem more reasonable.

It would have made a bit of a difference (to me) if the "feather" had been labeled "bundle of feathers". Taking the labeling somewhat too literally and not realizing what all was involved in "harvesting feathers". Still won't make me happy about the time needed, as I was thinking in terms of animal hides, but your explanation made it more tolerable by changing my perspective. The "I didn't think about it in that way" view. The price in time and effort to be paid to get them makes more sense now.

I am harvesting the feathers from five ptarmigans and I felt there had to be a better way to get four feathers than spending 21 (with a knife) or 28 minutes (by hand) to get just four feathers. Two hours (and 200 calories) for four feathers? How about a tool similar in form to what Will started out with in Wintermute to speed the process up. Basically a shard of sharp metal. Increases the rate that feathers get harvested from one every 21-28 minutes to four every 21 - 28 minutes. It take 1% condition loss per harvesting action and cannot be sharpened and is ultimately disposable with nothing that can be extracted from the ruined tool (like sewing kits or cleaning kits). It just gets disposed of. With such a tool harvesting four feather from a ptarmigan carcass will be the equivalent to taking a hide of any other animal (by hand at Carcass Harvesting level 5). The skill carcass harvesting could also have the same effect on harvesting time. I am at Level 5 so think of harvesting a hide as taking 28 minutes by hand or 21 minutes by knife. One scrap metal at a work bench with (whatever time the devs decide on) to fashion into the tool. It can be used to make the initial incision in place of using a knife, hatchet, or hacksaw. The incision cut or any harvesting on a "normal" animal would cost 5% condition. If used like a knife for any other purpose - like fighting a wolf or cutting up a pillow - the tool takes 5% condition loss with each use. The tool is not a good or replacement knife. It is a field expedient tool. An improvised knife or hatchet tool would be more durable and have wider use. I am sure that if this is considered OP the devs, if they decided to implement something like this, would make adjustments.

I didn't think that improvised insulation was properly situated on one of the Accessory Slots. It should have been usable as a replacement for an inner layer (i.e. where the thick/thin wool sweater would go). Its utter lack of any water-resistance makes it problematic to have it as an outside everything layer. It looks rather strange for an outer covering. Suggest that a new clothing item that might be more suitable for an Accessory Slot would be a deerskin cloak. Version 1 would be two deer hides (min 1 kg) and Version 2 would be three deer hides (min 1.25 kg). The difference between the two would be one is like a shoulders to legs covering akin to the Light Shell - primarily as wind protection with some warmth bonus - though I would expect that would negate any other worn wind chill protection bonus while the second is like the first except it includes a hood meaning it provides more protection than the Light Shell because the wind protection now extends to the head. If the devs decide to work it in then a Version 3 which uses rabbit fur for a slight enhancement to the warmth bonus of the deerskin cloak. Alternately one might use ptarmigan feathers for insulation. The bonus would be minimal, +1 C, over the default warmth and wind chill protection of the basic cloak. Might be a bit heavy (min 1.75 kg). Now why have a cloak? It keeps the clothing underneath the covered areas dry until the cloak gets 100% wet. It may be quicker to dry, like a Light Shell or Windbreaker, being light-weight while tougher than the Windbreaker or Light Shall. A balance could probably be found somewhere. It would also provide yet another clothing item that might be crafted from available hides and guts assuming that it is seen as having enough utility to be worth crafting. A change in mechanics might see the use of line made from gut that currently only is used on fishing gear as a heavy-duty thread of sorts.

Happy New Year everyone. 🍻 Hope that more things enters world of The Long Dark and that more bugs get squashed as expeditiously as possible. 💉☠️

I haven't been to Zone of Contamination but will get there eventually. I am now at Orca gas station trying to get myself motivated to walk into Milton. I am only in Milton and, eventually, to Hushed River Valley because of the Signal Void Tale. This is literally the first time ever that I have ventured here. Those regions had always been my "there be dragons" place to be explored once Perseverance Mills went live and brought Wintermute to an end. I am not completely unfamiliar with the regions since I do watch other do play-throughs.

Story mode presumably occurs over a pretty short period of time. As it operates at Voyager level, that means that it would take 40 days for scurvy risk to appear which would be longer than story mode was supposed to last and there still would be the canned foods and other food stuffs available. Given those facts, it would be unnecessary for that affliction to appear in Story mode and very likely won't unless the devs come up with a quest that involves it in episode 5. But who knows?!?

If that wolf eating was seen fairly consistently by others at that location, then it was likely a scripted action for the wolf to be there and "apparently" eating. The presence of a ravaged carcass was part of the script so if you'd happened by 10 days or 100 days later it would have not finished the carcass. Once the wolf was interrupted the script ends. That the carcass of the presumably "freshly killed" deer being frozen was just one of those inconsistencies that pop up in the game. I can imagine that the wolf and carcass was put there by the devs to 1) draw the character's attention to a food source and 2) if needed, provide some [uncontaminated] meat for the character to access.

I wonder if the limiting scurvy to new saves might be a kind of test to see if the mechanic they introduced actually would work as intended when it went live. It could always be made to go live on existing saves but if there was some serious bug in the mechanic's implementation then maybe better to keep the affect population smaller for the immediate future until they were sure.

Watched Blue Eye Samurai episode 1 and didn't know that by hammering the end of a steel tool that part can become hot enough to light incense or tinder. Seems like kind of common enough knowledge among people who work metal but I certainly didn't know that. Heavy hammer and a piece of steel (probably, for game purposes, forged piece of steel or maybe the improvised knife/hatchet and with a condition cost for the tool) and tinder. Not a quick method but maybe just the thing to justify toting that heavy hammer around for more than forging or breaking up planks, pallets, furniture, and crates. Tinder should be a requirement (an alternative fire starting that negates the "no tinder required" benefit, if one wanted to use it). More involved that flint and steel or a fire stick in terms of implementation but a thought.

I looked at how the flask stores its contents and each particular drink is kept discrete from every other drink in the flask. Since the flask keeps the drinks separate as items in the flask and the drinks can have different conditions, the ability to just "take a swig" from the flask would have been complex and so was not allowed. One could argue that the contents of the flask should all mix together with a condition depending on the condition of each drink put into the flask but the devs, apparently, didn't go that route and it was their discretion. Treating the flask like compartmentalized storage was probably easier to implement than one where each drink put in and whatever was taken out, in whatever quantity, had some effect on the condition of the contents.

Being out to get every possible advantage for my character when it comes to beachcombing, I would suggest that items that wash up most absolutely in particular pain killers 😨 should show more randomness in their condition rather than a steady deterioration towards ruined condition. The inclusion of Frontier Cooking ingredients might also be added to Beachcombing either in some of those trunks or lockers and/or maybe on that boat that shows up very infrequently. How about adding in a sealed plastic trash bag as a new container of goodies for beachcombing purposes. At least the plastic bag would seem more plausible than twin steel lockers. 😉

I have been interested in doing that but from what I can tell it cannot be done. I think it is a limitation of Unity that prevents us from copying and pasting. We're not doing so strictly within the OS but through Unity so unless some provision is added to Unity we're likely out of luck. I certainly wouldn't mind the capacity to export the journal to an external text file.

It was and is irritating to find that my J key for the Journal now takes me to the Signal Void Tales screen and that's it. No hit the J key twice to get to the Signal Void screen then to the Journal screen and a third time closes the journal back to the screen. I write very regularly, almost daily game-wise, in the journal (probably why my save game is 13 MB now 😅) so the intrusion of Signal Void Tales into this was unwelcome. I have adjusted to this but that does not mean I like it. Sounds like a reason to add another assigned/assignable hotkey to bring up the Tales (or an optional auxiliary menu).

The game has had this propensity of having a curing hide and its condition get out of whack. I have seen a deer hide and two guts be ruined (0% condition) and 11% cured though that should not have happened if things had gone the way they should have. Aside from not putting ruined (0% condition) items into a container of any kind (if you want to be safe) I have found that ruined crafting materials could be used to craft or repair items. If you want to make that bearskin whatever load up with the cured ruined bearskin and necessary other materials and tools and see if the game would let you craft. If it doesn't that will be evident right off the bat. I have repaired boots with ruined cured leather so ASSUME that should apply to that ruined but cured bear skin. Good luck.

With regular tools, repairing the travois takes 1 hour with a knife, 1.5 hours with a hatchet, and 2 hours if you don't have any tools. Found that the improvised knife takes 78 minutes (1 hour 18 minutes) about 30% longer than using a knife. Don't know if tool kits modify that. No work bench needed. Travois cannot be deployed indoors (at least inside the Quonset Garage) and not inside the No. 3 coal mine and the Cinder Hills mine.

Changing direction with the travois seems limited to a (guess) 20 degree left to 20 degree right so call it (new math) a 45 degree arc centered on your initial direction. This can be a kind of problem if in close maneuvering space so keep that in mind. I have bases all over the place where I keep deer hide and guts. If I were going to go close to the max repair of the travois (reported that 70% is max repair) or out into the unknown I would make sure to keep an extra deer hide and gut at my forward operating base just to be able to repair it. I find I like the travois for its intended purpose. It works pretty well.

Discovered that apparently when one wants to move something into a container the game considers the total amount of the source (i.e. what the character has in inventory) compared to the available space in the container and if the available space would be exceeded then does not show the Transfer UI. Example: Metal container, capacity 15 kg. Have in inventory 120 sticks, weight 18 kg. The game looks at the source (you) and determines that there is no way that 120 sticks would fit into the container that can hold 100 sticks and will not show the Transfer UI. Drop 20 sticks so the inventory count is 100 sticks and then the game would show the Transfer UI because 100 sticks could fit into the container. (I think I got this right). Initially encountered when I had 99 sticks in a backpack in Trapper's and wanted to add one more while having 25 in inventory and WFH? can't put it in. Initially unloaded all the sticks from the backpack and then could put 100 sticks into the backpack. At that point I think I had too many sticks to fit in the backpack but I vaguely remember that it seemed to work. I was a bit upset at the moment. Was thinking so the update introduced a bug about putting stuff into a container though not quite as straight-forward as I initially thought. Later, when I figured it out. I had a container with 75 sticks (capacity 100 sticks) and I had 27 sticks in inventory. Can't get Transfer UI so, based on what I figured out, I dropped 2 sticks on the floor then I could get the UI and move those 25 sticks into the container. Just have to be aware of that for now. Situational but can be infuriating at times.