Messages

1

General Discussion / Re: Thoughts on All Crops

« on: May 13, 2023, 12:29:30 AM »

if you thresh 1 barley plant, you get 2 grains, but if you thresh 1 rye plant, you get 3 grains, so the yield is quite a bit better, balancing out the longer growing time

Ah, I did miss that. Yeah, that does make Rye quite a lot more powerful if weight per unit of grain is the same

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General Discussion / Thoughts on All Crops

« on: May 08, 2023, 07:15:29 PM »

Been trying my hand at farming on my current URW game, and decided to share my thoughts on each plantable crop. As a minor disclaimer, I am using BAC crafting mod, so I have access to a few recipes that allow more efficient usage of flour than vanilla's flatbread and porridge. Also, some more variety in how to prepare everything else too, but that's less important. More importantly though is that it allows me to turn yarn into cloth and from there into actual clothing, thus giving more reason for more extensive planting and harvesting of textile plants.

Barley: Great nutrition. Takes a pretty long time to grow, but generally can grow to maturity when planted planting as soon as it's possible on spring unless you are too far north, and it can have quite large stacks of plants per square, which means you can either prepare less soil or use more soil for everything else. Harvest window is pretty narrow though, so people just dabbling in agriculture will likely have trouble.

Rye: Nearly functionally identical to Barley, except a bit little worse. Very slightly less nutrition, takes slightly longer to grow. You might want to plant it in fall instead to winter the crop and see it sprout earlier next spring, specially if you are not really to the south. Very narrow harvest window, specially if planted on spring instead of wintered. I somewhat Rye flatbread in specific being used in some ritual, but my current characters don't have that one so I can't confirm. It might be easier to just trade for some bags of Rye instead if that's the case though.

Turnip: Relatively low nutrition for its weight, but very heavy. Grows really fast, and if you can often get two harvests per year if your timing is good. Great filler for when you are already on abundant nutrition, or if you really need something to help you last until the better crops are ready for harvest. Do seem to bring pretty large stacks of crops per square. Seems to work as bait for Elks and Reindeers in traps. Seeds not worth trying to make into food though, unless you are desperate.

Broad Bean: While not the most nutritious per weight, it's more than enough to keep you very healthy. Takes relatively long to grow, but has a very large harvest window, only withering a month after winter already started. Good if you are only dabbling in agriculture and/or like to travel and might miss a narrow harvest window. Not very large crop stack per square, but each plant does get threshed into five large bean pods, so it's remains a solid option. Worth mentioning that 3 broad bean pods will just exactly fill the meat soup requirement for vegetables (and the meat stew option for it) without any leftover.

Pea: Low nutrition, takes pretty long to mature, small plant stacks, only produces 2 small pea pods per plant. Honestly, rather useless to plant. Harvest them if you find them on the wild, sure, and you can always try to trade for it (although villages seem to only have half bags of it for sale, but that's just a matter of consolidating them in a single bag later). Honestly, I don't know why you'd plant this unless it's for roleplay purposes.

Hemp: Very versatile. Textile crop, making one fibre per about 8 dried retted straw/plant. Each plant also produces 2 fistful of seeds, at about 100g each, with pretty good nutrition, in addition to 2 fistful of leafs (with pretty low nutrition due to thresh multiplier, but not quite insignificant), at about 2/3 of the weight of the seeds. Takes very long to grow, and depending on where your farm is, they might wither before maturing unless you winter them. Like all other textile crops, can be harvested early just for fibre, but that's something of a waste given how good they are for food. Relatively small stacks.  Also [insert jokes about weed/police attention/420/whatever here].

Flax: Very good for textile, at 1 fibre per 5 straw/plant, matures pretty quickly and survives quite a bit of time. Flowers before full maturity, which might be worth if you want to brew some flax tea or something. Fully mature plants produce 2 seeds per, at about 10g per seed. Quite nutritious, but simply not enough weight to live off it unless you really go out of your way to make massive flax farms and take a massive time threshing everything. I generally find it worth planting to make textiles, with the food as a nice bonus out of it.

Nettle: Textile, at 1 fibre per 15 straw/plant. Plant produces leafs and seeds, with seeds barely more nutritious than turnip by weight, and leaf insignificant other than the medicinal properties. After you get a bit of a leaf stockpile to use for their properties or as seasoning filler, might be worth to just harvest young instead of waiting for maturity. Honestly not worth planting. It does have one big advantage though, in that it's incredibly common in the wild, specially on river and lake banks. Just take a boat trip and can get massive quantities of it very easily.

Clayweed: Nutrition is pretty good, but stacks are pretty small, and each plant doesn't produce much. Definitely better than peas, but then again, just about everything is. There are better crops, but might be worth for a challenge and/or roleplay. But honestly, just harvest it on the wild.   

Yarrow: Useless nutritionally. Somewhat common on the wild. Pretty good set of medical properties. Get a stockpile of it, ideally from the wild unless running a challenge or have roleplay reasons for not doing so, and there you have it.

Sorrel: Useless nutritionally. Incredibly common in the wild. Pretty meh set of medical properties, but not entirely so. I wouldn't even bother harvesting it unless I'm desperate or just want some to stockpile to roleplay more variety in food.

And as a bonus,

Lake Reed: Not plantable, but massively common across most lakes. Very good nutrition, with a root that can be used as a vegetable or ground into flour. Takes a bit of time to actually harvest, at 4 minutes per plant, and it comes in somewhat large stacks in very large clusters of plants. Take a week or two to go on a boat trip and come back when your punt is basically overloaded with them. Might have to make a few shelters around the lakes, because they mature around a very wet season, which makes just sleeping on the boat a bit annoying. And with the harvest time, you'll very much have to sleep during such expedition. 3 roots per plant, with each root about 50g.

Milkweed: Surprisingly decent nutrition on the root, pretty solid set of medical properties. Quite common in the wild. 4 minutes per plant to harvest. Wouldn't consider depending on it for long term survival, but it's pretty good forage during long trips and expeditions if you brought a pot.

3

Gameplay questions / Re: Nettle Harvesting

« on: April 29, 2023, 10:42:48 AM »

is there a way I can get BOTH the parts needed to make fibre, and the leaves?

Yes. You harvest it (from the agriculture menu) instead of picking (with g). Then you thresh it. The result is all available parts of that plant: Seeds, leaves and straw to make fibre.

Be sure the ones you are trying to harvest are actually mature Nettle, as you can also harvest young nettle that can only be used to make fibre but not threshed.

4

Gameplay questions / Re: Snares need yarn now?!

« on: April 27, 2023, 06:21:42 AM »

Look for fords to cross rivers, if it's cold then prepare to build a fire to warm you when you reach the other bank.  Take along 3 branches or twigs.  Don't take more if, as with some fords, you have to swim - the extra weight can drown you!

Some lakes are massive, others you can easily go around.

Days to go around this one. Where can I find and how can I recognize fords? I don't have the ability to swim across the rivers for sure, will die trying.

Fords are labeled as such in the terrain type. Also slightly different zoomed out map tile, so when you do find one, try to look closely.

Alternatively, if you do have an axe, time and enough food to live off about a week or so, you can make a raft. Peel a bunch of birch barks, make rope out of that, three three trunks (or was it logs?) near a river, make the raft, drag it to the riverbank. Also, a paddle or sesta, of course. Then you can just cross safely anywhere. I recommend doing that in rapids even, so that you can keep crossing during the early freezes when the ice is not strong enough to hold a person.

5

Mod Releases / Re: [3.72] Community Bod BAC: Smith, Cooking, Survival, Carpentry, Sewing and More!

« on: April 22, 2023, 05:21:14 PM »

For some reasons, Large Amphoras are weighting about 1/7-1/6 of the weight of normal amphoras (approximately, because I'm using metric, and URW can be a bit funky with the conversions). An empty large amphora is 0.6kg while the empty amphora is 4.1kg. Which obviously is wrong. But I can't seem to find why this is happening. The code seems to be fine, as seem below copied straight from the .txt file.

Code: [Select]

.Amphora. "Wooden Tub"   [effort:0] [phys:hands,one-armed] *COMMON*  %30%    /90/ \6h\
{Clay lump}   (15)   [remove]
{Water} #7.5# [remove] '+to soften clay during shaping'
{*kiln} [noquality] [ground] '+to dry shape in'
{Fire}
{Branch} (30) [remove] [ground] '+as fuel to dry clay'
[PRICE:1]
[CONT_CAPACITY:25]
[WEIGHT:9]
[TILEGFX:bc-claypot]
// Inspired by amphora to hold large quantites.
// Tub in name to be seen by other recipes
// As a tub it isn't able to be used in cooking
// Good for storing the grains from threshing
// Used efficiency of scale on capacity vs weight
// Probably would be pushing what could be fit in the kiln


.Large Amphora. "Wooden Tub"   [effort:0] [phys:hands,one-armed] *COMMON*  %30%    /180/ \12h\
{Clay lump}   (45)   [remove]
{Water} #22.5# [remove] '+to soften clay during shaping'
{*kiln} [noquality] [ground] '+to dry shape in'
{Fire}
{Branch} (90) [remove] [ground] '+as fuel to dry clay'
[PRICE:2.7]
[CONT_CAPACITY:125]
[WEIGHT:27]
[TILEGFX:bc-claypot]
// A regular amphora will hold enough water to make the large.
// An amphora so big it will be about all you can carry when
// full. 125 lbs is about 15 gallons of fresh water
// This is actually too big for the kiln presented but not
// worth having a seperate menu.
Will try to debug this out later, but leaving the report here for now if someone has any idea about what's happening.

6

Mod Releases / Re: [3.72] Community Bod BAC: Smith, Cooking, Survival, Carpentry, Sewing and More!

« on: April 21, 2023, 02:11:52 AM »

Because the staff does not have patch in the first line, you make one staff from one slender trunk, you could add patch to the staff recipe if you want to make multiple staves from multiple slender trunks.

But it does? Just on the end of the line, both recipes have [patch]

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Mod Releases / Re: [3.72] Community Bod BAC: Smith, Cooking, Survival, Carpentry, Sewing and More!

« on: April 20, 2023, 10:27:01 AM »

You are correct, it is an error. you cannot just add [patchwise] to the slender truck as the same code is used for making a staff, you should edit the stake recipe to

.Wooden stake.    [effort:1]  [patch] [phys:arms,one-armed]  *TIMBERCRAFT* ( /30/ %40% |-2|
{Cutting weapon} <Axe>   
{Slender trunk}   [patchwise] [remove]

This then works as expected and intended.

Why would the staff recipe shouldn't have the [patchwise] tag as well for the Slender Trunk?

8

Mod Releases / Re: [3.72] Community Bod BAC: Smith, Cooking, Survival, Carpentry, Sewing and More!

« on: April 20, 2023, 07:36:13 AM »

Currently the Lumber crafting file has the following recipe for staves and wooden stakes:

Code: [Select]

.Wooden stake. [effort:1] [phys:arms,one-armed]  *TIMBERCRAFT* (8) /30/ %40% |-2| [patch]
.Staff. [effort:1] [phys:arms,one-armed]  *TIMBERCRAFT* /15/ %60% |-2| [patch]
{Cutting weapon} <Axe>
{Slender trunk} [remove]

Is the absence of [patchwise] for the Slender Trunk intentional? That is, that you can make up to 80 stakes or 10 staves out of a single slender trunk?

9

Gameplay questions / Re: Having trouble with trapping.

« on: April 17, 2023, 02:04:19 PM »

For large animals, I really recommend you first finding some before actually putting down traps. Finding an Elk/Reindeer, put a trap or minor trap fence on the location, maybe bait with a turnip, and voila, you'll get it. And it's quite likely that more animals will eventually appear on the same general area, instead of hoping you lucked out on spot you picked actually being somewhere they tend to go. Bears similar thing, just use meat instead of turnips.

Foxes: Same as before, but easier because you can use paw-traps. Raw meat is best bait, raw fish works too. I've heard stories of preserved/cooked meat working, but I haven't had as much luck with those.

Birds: Loop snares and/or lever traps all around wherever you're staying. Doubly so around your cellar and your field. They now can fly over the traps, mind you, but enough should be landing nearby, trying to steal your food or peck your crops. So trap your "reality bubble", and give it time. You'll probably be catching a whole damn bunch whenever you stay there for multiple days.

Hares: Never had any luck trapping those. Maybe loop snares around berry bushes I guess?

Most small animals: Small deadfall traps are useful, specially if baited with the appropriate thing, but you'll probably want first to find the animal or at least tracks. Meat on small deadfall traps can be really powerful given the value of the furs of some of tho

A note: Be careful with heavy deadfall traps. As I understand traps still have some chance of spawning appropriate animals near it. And one of the animals for heavy deadfall traps are wolves. Which come in packs and are an absolute nightmare to fight. Very valuable, yes, but incredibly dangerous too. I'd rather fight a bear naked with a single knife than a pack of wolves, even with proper equipment. So, do not put them in the immediate vicinity of your house. And remember that, once you get a house, you can shoot arrows and throw javelins through windows, so if you do get a wolf infestation, shoot from inside.

For actually trapping wolves, yeah, heavy deadfall traps, with at least some distance from your base, and, very importantly, let all non-trapped wolves leave before you try to grab the carcasses (because you might also want to let the trapped ones die naturally instead of accelerating it for safety sake).

Finally: Remember, keep the spirits happy. Do a general sacrifice daily (they don't seem to mind if your sacrifice is not valuable, caloric, or even poisonous, just so long it's not spoiled, so feel free to sacrifice berries, mushrooms, and whatever else you can find), and use any other appropriate spells you might know.

As an addendum: It's not as easy as it used to be anymore, but you might also want to consider trapping the most valuable of preys: Foreign traders. Upon finding a group and more or less figuring out their heading, some staked (important, because you want them to bleed to death without your direct involvement) pits on where they will eventually be can net you incredibly valuable goods. Do keep in mind that if they see you making a given trap pit they won't fall for that one. And they are pretty good at noticing trap fences, even if you use just a wall of trap pits instead of any actual fence, so make use of natural chokepoints, and careful to not make it too contiguous.

10

General Discussion / Re: What's Going On In Your Unreal World?

« on: April 15, 2023, 10:08:19 AM »

Currently, I'm, having a lot of trouble with a very first world problem: Been trying to finish my log cabin, but animals keep falling on my traps one after another. I have about half a dozen trap pits near-ish my intended home (in spots where I previously found an animal or tracks, instead of trying to hunt them down, put down a trap pit in some bottleneck. Occasionally bait with a meat cut or turnip to make it faster).

And now I can't find the time to actually do any logging and building, because of how many animals keep falling on the traps, sometimes multiple in a single week even. Currently I'm in the process of tanning a wolf fur, waiting on around some 700 elk cuts drying (just moved around the same number to the cellar too), and have two more live bull elks stuck on traps whom I'm letting be so I can keep up with it.

Thankfully I have enough clothing and firewood, because it's midwinter too, so when the day goes colder than usual, it really goes cold. But yeah, first world problems moment, really. 

11

Mod Releases / Re: Community mod BAC: Smith, Cooking, Punts, Survival, Carpentry, Sewing

« on: January 27, 2021, 07:55:41 PM »

In something I'm not entirely sure if it's an overlook or a design choice, as of  the recipe to extract fibre from dried retted plants lack a [noquality] tag on the ingredient, which is produced with said tag.

Tuukka has seen some fine fibers. I checked his stockpile and im showing fine from spruce bast. Which isn't the right plants. I think he had fine nettle/hemp fibers that he used in his clothes.  It will be a while before I have a fresh stock of retted hemp/nettles to check again.

Weaving in real life was something people, typically women, specialized in so I think there should be skill ratings.

The recipes for extracting fibre from Birch-Bark and spruce saplings (but not Rowan Bark), in the Barkware module, all have the base ingredient with a noquality tag, allowing them to be made fine. The recipes for extracting fibre from dried retted plants on the other hand, in the Weaving Module, don't, not allowing fibre of better quality than the dried retted plant, which is a noquality ingredient.

Code: (From diy_BAC_Weaving.txt) [Select]

.Dry Retted Plants.  "Branch" [noquality] *AGRICULTURE* /2/  \7d\ [patch:20] |-2| [effort:1] [phys:arms,stance,one-armed]
{Retted *} [remove] [patchwise] [name:Dried Retted %s] [naming:last word] '+use retted hemp or nettle'
//[TILEGFX:rc-dried]
[TYPE:tool]
[WEIGHT:0.25]

.Extract Fibre. "Rock" *AGRICULTURE* /15/ [patch:10] [effort:3] [phys:arms,stance] [assist:1]
{Dried Retted *} [remove] [patchwise] [ground] [name:Fibre from %s] [naming:last word] '+Dried, Retted Plants'
{Club} '+for scutching'
{Knife} <Small knife>
{*comb} [optional]
[TILEGFX:rc-fibre]
// Icon provided by Kaaven from the Urw Forums, modified
[TYPE:tool]
[WEIGHT:0.1]

In comparison:

Code: (From diy_BAC_Barkware.txt) [Select]

// Adapted from Bouidda 2.1
.Extract Spruce fibre. "Hunting horn" *CARPENTRY* /45/ %-50% [patch:5] [effort:0] [phys:arms,stance] [assist:1]
{Spruce sapling} [remove] [patchwise] [ground] [noquality]
{Fire} [noquality] '+for softening inner sap'
{Beater} [noquality] '+for scutching'
[NAME:fibre from spruce-bast]
[TYPE:tool]
[WEIGHT:0.1]
[PRICE:0]
[TILEGFX:bc-fibre]


.Fibre from birch-bark. "Hunting horn" (7) [phys:hands,one-armed] *HIDEWORKING* %-70% /1h/ [patch:5]
{*Birch-bark*}   #1#   [remove] [noquality] [patchwise] [name:Fibre from birch-bark]
{Knife}             [noquality]
[TYPE:tool]
[MATERIAL:birch-bark]
[WEIGHT:0.1]
[PRICE:0]
[TILEGFX:bc-fibre]


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Mod Releases / Re: Community mod BAC: Smith, Cooking, Punts, Survival, Carpentry, Sewing

« on: January 17, 2021, 09:14:31 PM »

In something I'm not entirely sure if it's an overlook or a design choice, as of  the recipe to extract fibre from dried retted plants lack a [noquality] tag on the ingredient, which is produced with said tag.

That is, it's impossible to get better than average fibre from flax, hemp and nettle, preventing better than average cloth from being produced by the player.

In a semi-related sidenote, if you have a combined crafting area, spindles and distaffs keeps getting consumed by other recipes that require stakes or staffs.

13

Mod Releases / Re: Community mod BAC: Smith, Cooking, Punts, Survival, Carpentry, Sewing

« on: December 31, 2020, 05:27:33 AM »

= Flax graphic was missing now in

As a note on this, soaking flax still doesn't seem to have graphics, or at least a wrong graphical call (plus inconsistent in behavior with flax needing to be in the water, while the rest can be near water).

Edit: Nevermind, seems I'm a couple versions behind and this has been fixed already. Ah, the curse of fast updates.

Happy to confound you. 

Checked latest version though, and seems I was half-right: The retted flax is still graphic-less. It points to an it-retted, which doesn't exist in the true-tiles folder that comes with the mod (or with the game). The graphic that the retted hemp and nettle points is the rc-retted, which does exist.

Well, so long you haven't updated this in the last few minutes or so.

14

Mod Releases / Re: Community mod BAC: Smith, Cooking, Punts, Survival, Carpentry, Sewing

« on: December 30, 2020, 10:42:59 PM »

= Flax graphic was missing now in

As a note on this, soaking flax still doesn't seem to have graphics, or at least a wrong graphical call (plus inconsistent in behavior with flax needing to be in the water, while the rest can be near water).

Edit: Nevermind, seems I'm a couple versions behind and this has been fixed already. Ah, the curse of fast updates.

15

General Discussion / Re: Loop Snares, better than Fences? A possible bug

« on: December 30, 2020, 09:28:50 PM »

Just did some "accidental" testing of this: Some foreign traders walked into my homestead. I wasn't entirely sure if they took anything, so I decided to take everything from them. Failed a few attempts, saved scummed out of a back-up save I had made before trying. Ended back here: I had a few fox traps in storage, so I put three of them blocking the door to my cabin and started firing at the traders with bow and arrow: Traders with melee weapons suddenly keep hanging around the front of my place without actually managing to get in, despite the trap being entirely harmless to people. At no point they decided to try to destroy the traps instead.

For reference, the save before installing the traps and shooting the traders:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgqYS4wYOScuiQ85vQpATl0_flli?e=DYKR3t (download link will expire 1st of february 2021). It uses BAC if there's trouble loading it without the mod or something.