Messages

91

Gameplay questions / Re: Stews

« on: June 19, 2017, 04:01:58 PM »

Yea, basically, I've found it easier to jump between nourished and well-fed with dried and smoked meat.  If I go with soups and stews, should I wait until my hunger meter is full or close to full then or is there a "better" way to eat so to speak.

Essentially, am I eating wrong?

With soups, it is probably better to wait till you are dehydrated (a bit), to conserve water. With stews you can eat like with roasted fats of big animals (except a stew is usually less nourishing), i.e. when nutrition is relatively low. I wouldn't care about hunger meter, only nutrition. Also well-fed, nourished or abundant is the same for most purposes, it only gives you a vague idea how much longer till your next meal. There is only one often performed task where it is kind of important to have better nutrition (preferably abundant) before attempting it - the final step of tanning, i.e. beating. You cannot safely pause it, it always takes hours, even with max skill, and it uses much energy (nutrition).

In your case, if you don't feel good about stews, I think it would be better to just abandon them. The stews are made faster than smoked/dried items, they keep longer than roasted meat, and if made properly they are better than the plain meats, but their real purpose is to use low-nutrition, crappy food (like carnivore meat, mushroom, berries, plants and what not) and make something better out of this for immediate consumption. Well, that and a bit of realism. Who would be happy eating dried  meat for weeks?

92

Gameplay questions / Re: Stews

« on: June 18, 2017, 03:03:33 PM »

It is also possible to overeat, using more food than necessary, while capping the energy counter (which is capped at 5000, but you are Abundant from 3701, and can't really know if you can safely eat something without wasting it or no). This is wasteful, but sometimes better than allowing the food to spoil, and sometimes you have no choice, because game just doesn't let you character stop eating.

That could be what I'm running into perhaps.  I find that I eat bigger chunks of the stew than I do roasted meat cuts, and if I'm reading that correct (I could be wrong), I have to eat the stew slower in order to absorb the most nutrients.

I'm used to jumping between nourished and abundant when I eat dried meat, and perhaps trying to do the same with stew is a bad idea.

I noticed you compared roasted stag meat but not dried.  How does the comparison stack with dried stag meat, since dried meat seems to be the most common thing for my character to eat.

Dried meat is 10x concentrated, but has 0.1 mass. Smoked meat is 8x concentrated, but has 0.125 mass of raw meat. With exception of bear and fats, eating one dried meat cut gives the same amount of nutrition as a roasted meat of the same species, or salted, or smoked one. No gain and no loss. With bear and fats, dried ones do give less nutrition, because one byte cannot keep the required amount of proteins or lipids after concentrating (that's the computational limitation I mentioned).

There is another difference though. The smallest amount to eat is 0.1 lbs. Since dried meat weighs as much, you always eat whole one. It may be wasteful if you are Abundant already (you require some "free stomach space" to be able to eat, but not much, so can eat again after several steps, when your internal caloric meter is still close to maximum). With non-concentrated foods you can eat less than one cut, and conserve the rest for later, but it depends on the game whether it happens. For some reason some foods are "overeaten" more often than other. It happens particularly often with fats. Sometimes it would be enough to eat for example 1.2 lbs of that 2.33 lbs roasted fat to hit the cap, but the character eats 1.5 lbs, and the 0.3 lbs is wasted. You won't see that, because the nutrition meter says Abundant, but it happens. On another occasion, the character eats less than required to hit the cap and nothing is wasted, but you still don't see the difference in description. I don't know what is the basis of these differences, maybe it's some attributes, or rich foods are irresistible, or it's random to a degree. As far as I know, there are no hidden personal traits (like "likes to stuff himself" or "frugal ascetic").

93

Gameplay questions / Re: Can you be a Bandit?

« on: June 18, 2017, 01:47:52 PM »

Also, to devour the corpses of your victims you have to be starving so unless you "prepare" yourself by starving yourself before committing the murders [should you survive fighting in your weakened condition], the corpses will spoil before you can eat them.

A practical hint for cannibals: in deep winter, it is possible to make yourself starving enough after the kill, and before spoilage. Spoiling is chance based, and this chance stays lower in winter (though still is rather high), so often one corpse stays fresh a day or two longer than another one. Keep a low nutrition value, but not necessarily starving. After the kill, make some heavy work (like cutting some trees), which will starve you faster. Starving is not enough to be able to carve corpses. You need one to three stats lowering events before that, so continue with cutting trees, making boards out of them or something, and try to cut the corpse after each stats lowering message. The stats lowering event is also chance based, and it is possible to gain it even several times during a single board-cutting exercise. My record is four stats-lowerings in 6 hours, so the nearby corpse didn't even had a chance to spoil.

It's best to be always at low nutrition level (like malnourished), to increase chances, and have no skills lowered until required.

By the way, statistical adult human corpse gives 42 cuts of meat, and for kid it's only 18, it isn't that much, so honestly I don't think this is the "easy" way of sustenance, with tricks or without. And you can run out of villagers.

94

General Discussion / Re: Telling Furs Apart

« on: June 18, 2017, 12:59:30 PM »

Does anyone have a good system for telling one fur from another? I have furs that won't stack together, so clearly some are winter furs and others are summer furs, but I don't know which is which.

From what I've read, they are equivalent for crafting but very different in value, so I'd rather not waste a winter fur on crafting. For the ones I've got, I expect I'll have to drag them to a village and seeing what they fetch in trade, but for the future - how do you guys keep track?

There is no really practical way in the game. Each fur of the same quality can have at least four values (decent even twice that, because self-made don't stack with bought ones), some more (two sizes possible in some cases), so with 5 possible qualities you see this is a problem.

One way, which I used, is to create separate stacks/heaps with furs of know value, and drop the unknown fur to the stack, to see whether it stacks with the other, or is added at the end of list as a new item. If it doesn't stack, drop it to the other heap. Technically you need only four heaps, because qualities are shown, and yes, this is a bit messy. If you need leather from the stack, you always should leave one on the heap (so if you have three stag furs, you can take only two for crafting or trade). The one remaining fur would serve as a "standard" or "prototype".

Currently I use a cheatery way, determine value with Cheat Engine, but this is obviously not a general solution.

And yes, they are identical for crafting, more expensive furs don't increase value of crafted item. Additionally, for repair you can use any quality, so start with the harsh ones. Crafting fur items for trade is not a good idea by the way, because self-made clothing has only 20% value. So you probably won't need that many furs for crafting...

95

General Discussion / Re: Luckiest kill?

« on: June 14, 2017, 11:47:42 AM »

Broadheads do cutting damage that is more likely to cause a bleeding wound and they disable or kill faster. However, there are some disadvantages: a) may damage the hide more, especially with multiple hits; b) Not as good against armored people, because clothing & armor are usually more protective against cutting (edge) attacks than piercing (point) attack types.

I'll have to invest in some of those broad arrows on my current playthrough as too many times have animals been shot by my arrows but just kept running away and then I've lost them.

2 things.
tracking.
dogs.

It depends on how you play. My dogs usually carry too much stuff to be usable for that, especially when I'm returning home from a trip. My char is much faster than they are.

Lightly packed dogs on the other hand can be too fast for character to track themselves. If the chased animal changed direction off-screen, they may be hard to locate before it's too late (i.e. the dog is dead, or the hide is in tatters). So it can be a good solution, but not necessarily the best under all circumstances.

96

Gameplay questions / Re: Armor - Maximum Protection

« on: June 14, 2017, 11:40:26 AM »

60 weight is a lot, I guess, but for strong characters it's not very much.

I took down a Njerp village hunting for woollen socks last night, the protection did pretty good.  I guess the only critique I have is that maybe the durability loss is worse with this set than with metal armor?  I really don't know.  It's a shame that you can't make or repair linen/nettle/woollen stuff.

60 lbs is pretty decent. Armour of my Kaumo guy weighs 129 lbs. He's almost invincible, and routinely takes on four robber groups, but I also like to carry many weapons, so total weight is around 200 lbs. Before tougher battles I drop some items, to 170-180 lbs total. This makes them easier, because they do no require so much tactics then. If my armour weighed 60 lbs, I would be like iron man, swift, deadly and mostly safe from retaliation.

However, problem with some of the items is that they wear pretty fast in a battle. Even if you mod them to be repairable, their HP can go below repair level (which is around 35% or so). Still, would try with my new character.

97

Gameplay questions / Re: dog food. what do they eat?

« on: June 14, 2017, 08:56:23 AM »

Dogs do eat a carcass, including rotten one, but they must be starving to do so. In one sitting they can eat about 20 lbs of meat, which is why eating humans may take some time. I use a pack of dogs for disposing of evidence (i.e. robbers and Njerps). They can eat the whole carcass, if it is small enough. Sometimes they are picky, and don't eat one particular carcass, just rearrange then.

Still, this is not really useful for keeping dogs satiated, because they must be hungry enough, which takes some time to accomplish, and they are barking in meantime. It's just that dogs can eat some things which are not readily eaten by PC (spoiled raw meat when not starving, or rotten carcass), and sometimes you can utilize this.

98

Gameplay questions / Re: Dude, where's my car?

« on: June 14, 2017, 08:46:04 AM »

There are no markers on local map, and this is a problem when dropping items when zoomed-in. When marking something I use description like "skin in eastern most kota". But how to describe location in a forest? So local marker (high visibility item) is a thing.

 True, but if you can find the world tile, you should be able to find the local map spot.. or you don't deserve your stuff.

I always find an item when dropped accidentally. But for dropped on purpose it is much faster and quicker to use marker-item, because I do it regularly. It's just a matter of saving time.

99

Gameplay questions / Re: Dude, where's my car?

« on: June 12, 2017, 01:06:13 PM »

There are no markers on local map, and this is a problem when dropping items when zoomed-in. When marking something I use description like "skin in eastern most kota". But how to describe location in a forest? So local marker (high visibility item) is a thing.

100

Gameplay questions / Re: Dude, where's my car?

« on: June 11, 2017, 08:00:29 PM »

In cases like this I always check the log to determine the location on global map, like mentioned. Then there is usually need to comb the whole area, 64x64 local tiles (that's over 1.6 hectare, quite a lot if it's a forest).

The best course of action is to prevent it, by dropping everything not needed on the zoomed-out map after spotting the enemy but before stepping on their tile. This also prevents them from picking up your items. Of course, it's only possible if you spot them in advance.

Personally I also use another trick - I modified graphics for arrows, javelins and spears to have a box of magenta colour. It may look ugly if there is a lot of arrows in one place, but it helps finding items in forest. I'm losing no more than 20% of shot arrows thanks to this. But I also use it as a marker for dropped items (and tanning skins in a village, felled animals when fighting a pack of them etc.), by dropping a single arrow (or broken arrow) over the stack.

101

Gameplay questions / Re: Stews

« on: June 09, 2017, 01:51:33 PM »

I think it would have been 3 cuts of stag meat and 0.25 units of (Quarts?  Drams?  Liters?) of water.  I could season it a bit with something to boost the nutrient contents perhaps, but I don't see the point.  From my experience, 3 dried cuts of stag meat a day could keep me well fed, while the stew made from 3 cuts of stag meat and 0.25 units of water would be finished quickly, and might leave me temperate or worse if I was relying on it.

I have checked this composition, and it's actually slightly better than the roasted meat. Not by that much (you may read below), but there is some gain in nutrition. There are reasons why you may get better results with meat than with stew sometimes. One is that particular activities have different energy requirements. Basal metabolism would require about 2.6 stag cuts per day. But even light and moderate efforts (making a cord, walking in the snow, crafting paddle) double that requirement, while heavy effort (cutting a tree) triples it. So to regain nutrition, you need the same amount of food after cutting a tree for one hour, as after lying in the grass and counting clouds for three hours. Which means that 3 stag cuts per day are realistic, but more than that are possible too. I suppose you performed heavier task when eating the stew, hence the difference. Or maybe ate something which filled the stomach, but had no nutrients to speak of, which prevented eating all the stew.

Comparison of these meals:
- roasted stag cut (1 lb) has 3 g of fat and 21 g of protein per 100 g, one cut gives 555 kcal, three cuts give 1665 kcal
- stag meat stew (3 lbs, takes 3x stag meat and 0.25 lbs of water) = 4 g fat, 22 g protein per 100 g, total = 1860 kcal
- stag meat stew (3.5 lbs, takes 3x stag meat, 0.25 lbs of water, 0.5 lbs of turnip) = 1 g carbohydrates, 3 g fat, 19 g protein, total = ~1872 kcal
Total, i.e. eating the whole meal, like 3.5 lbs of the stag meat stew with turnip.

This means, that stag meat stew without additives has biggest energy/nutrition density of all three, while the one with turnip has lowest density, but highest total (though not much better than no-additives version). Filling the stomach may prevent characters from eating the whole stew in one sitting, but eventually they will eat it all, and get the nutrients. Eating also takes some time and energy (it is "Easy" effort, so it takes 2 kcal/minute). You may eat something poisonous, like spoiled berry, to regain stomach capacity if need be...

It is also possible to overeat, using more food than necessary, while capping the energy counter (which is capped at 5000, but you are Abundant from 3701, and can't really know if you can safely eat something without wasting it or no). This is wasteful, but sometimes better than allowing the food to spoil, and sometimes you have no choice, because game just doesn't let you character stop eating.

102

Gameplay questions / Re: Buying animals

« on: June 06, 2017, 06:38:16 PM »

A couple of times now, I've purchased a cow and wound up getting a small cow instead - seems like a bit of a ripoff, since that affects their carrying capacity.

Price of animal is directly proportional to value of its meat, and its size (with dogs commanding a premium on top of that). Assuming you were cautious when buying and did not overpay, you are not ripped off. Smaller cow costs proportionally less than a bigger cow. Indeed the carrying capacity is proportional to the size (and thus price) of the animal. Actually the carrying capacity is the same as the size of the animal.

Also, currently the adjective (small and big) means only that the animal is 80% of average size or less, or 120% of average size or more. It is possible that the "normal" cow isn't much bigger than the small cow.

103

Gameplay questions / Re: How do animals scent bait? distances?

« on: May 31, 2017, 10:14:06 PM »

The old fox spawning incantation spawns a fox, and so would be effective with other rituals, while the new style rituals  (all I know of, anyway) would draw the type of prey into the trap if they are nearby, but if there is no bear around, no bear will be spawned to get into your trap.
I haven't performed any controlled experiments where some traps are subjected to rituals and some are left without, so it's hard to say if the rituals are effecting: I try to perform the appropriate ones on my character when they are known.

I think I've have been fairly lucky with catching bears while using rituals, though. I don't think I've had any bears visit the vicinity of my traps without getting trapped after learning the ritual (but it have taken some time, in some cases).

I had bears nearby, and they were never attracted. I have over 20 bear kills in direct combat, many somewhere in my home region. I don't use fox spawn spell (I simply don't remember to), besides I prefer arctic foxes (and they prefer me), but the foxes are apparently much more plentiful than bears, which is realistic. Still, this is maybe a difference in setting - maybe "migration" roads, inhospitable terrain or something like that. There are also many villages, animals could try to evade them for example.

104

Gameplay questions / Re: Armor - Maximum Protection

« on: May 31, 2017, 07:22:49 PM »

Second question, I read somewhere that armor quality doesn't change protection value, is that definitively correct?

I haven't found a single instance of difference of armour between poor and masterwork quality items. Assuming they have the same condition, they will set the total protection for a given body part to the same value. Whether their quality will play role in the combat - I don't know.

105

Gameplay questions / Re: Stews

« on: May 31, 2017, 05:09:57 PM »

I might be doing something wrong, but if you already have smoked or dried meat, is there really any point to making things like fish stew and meat stew?  Especially meat stew.

It seems like I'm getting less nutrition per cut of meat that I stew than if I eat the dried or roasted form of that meat.  Same thing if I boil the meat instead of stewing it.  I havn't tried adding herbs to the stew yet though so that might be what's missing.

If you give a detailed description of your stew composition (what you used as ingredients), I can tell you. It is possible to lose nutrition value by preparing meals, but it mostly happens with concentrated meals (for example: dried bear meat has less nutritional value than other forms, because of computational limitation, the same with dried fats). Stew shouldn't be concentrated enough, but there might be some rounding errors.

I often do meat stew, it doesn't stay fresh long (longer than roasted meat, though, and if you keep it in the cellar and are lucky then it may last a few weeks), and doesn't give water (unlike soup and some porridges), but seems to keep the value, more or less, and is usually marginally better than the meat itself. If you use plants with stew, it will have some carbohydrates, to increase variety. Meat alone doesn't have carbohydrates, only fat and proteins (good for paleo and ketogenic diets if you roleplay, but their effects are not implemented I believe )