A few noob questions

[Vinosity]

Heya folks,

I keep seeing you can preserve 19 cuts at a time, but when I try to dry fish, I can only dry the fish. Whether it's a pike or a roach, it's just the one fish and I can't figure out how to cut it up.

Also, is it worth drying some extra fish in the early game when you're just starting out? I have not had a successful hunt or trap yet, and I haven't had a character survive past the early game, but I'm hopeful!

And when/where do you decide on a permanent homestead? For my first few games I have been making a few different shelters but I don't really know how to pick a good spot to set up a permanent home. Do you look for nearby animal activity? Close to villages? Any particular features or biomes you prefer?

Thanks for taking the time to respond. If you have any other tips/tricks/things you wish you knew when you were new I'd love to hear them. Glad I found these forums and this amazing game!

[davidor]

You need the fish to have same freshness(caught in same day) for them to stack so you can dry/smoke/salt at most 19 at once.

Fishing is the best way for newbie to get food, you should find a fishing rod and go fishing in rapids or the sea. Lakes and rivers are having less ideal yield.

Don't worry about preserving fishes for now, spend time to make traps to get a steady food source then think about preserve your food.

[Vinosity]

Thanks, I appreciate the info

[Privateer]

 As stated the meat needs to be in a stack to process them together. It can be very difficult to get fish stacks that large.. due to freshness.
Large animals are where 19 cuts per cord really pays off.


 As to a home site, for me, I like to be away from towns as human activity diminishes animal activity. I like to be near water, generally building at 11:00 of the lake for some reason. I spread shelters around my hunting and trapping areas, some containing remote cellars.
 Establishing a building is usually done so I can smoke meat vs dry/salt/roast. For me this building usually ends up being renovated into a full home/settlement.

[PALU]

As indicated by other posts, fish isn't cut up into cuts, and since smoking/drying only allows preparation from a single stack, fish are problematic (but 1 cord for 19 salmons is enormously efficient from a cord perspective, in the rare winter case you can pull it off).

I generally settle by rapids just outside of tribal territory. I find the access to open water all year around to be very convenient. I also want nearby terrain where I can place farm plots (i.e. not mire).
The first "building" I make after a shelter is a cellar, as that adds a few days of shelf life to food, and the next one after that is a fake sauna (i.e. a stove rather than a sauna stove, but capable of performing all sauna tasks except a quest related one). This "sauna" is used for cooking and smoking (as well as the occasional sauna bath).
As opposed to Privateer, I build a separate house for sleeping in, and eventually a workshop. The reason for two buildings is that I spread (mod) crafting components into piles around the central tile of the workshop (where the crafting is performed), and I have separate piles of stuff in the "main" building (furs on the cot, a stove (that's never used), jewelry, bandages).

[Dungeon Smash]

I personally do not find preserving fish to be worthwhile, as fish are plentiful and the nutritional yield vs effort on dried fish is pretty low compared to other food sources (smoked meat).  That said, if i do catch more fish than I can use at one time, I will preserve the excess.

Choosing a location for settlement is as much personal preference as anything.  My biggest requirements are as follows:
1) Close to water (1-2 map tiles, or closer).  Rapids are better, lakes or rivers are fine.  the Sea also works very well.
2) Close to a mountain, preferably only a short walk away.  This makes a good lookout point, to see incoming threats or game animals.
3) Plentiful game - I like to scout around for an area that seems to have many large animals such as elk and reindeer.  Sometimes reindeer herds will stay in one area for a long time, and you can gradually cull the herd to obtain large quantities of meat and fur.

Spruce mires or coniferous forests make the best areas for settlement, as there are plentiful trees for building and usually more wildlife.  Marshes and mountains are too much of a pain, not enough trees and too hard to get around.  However, caves can be a very effective way for a character with low building/timbercraft skills to quickly set up a permanent base, especially if there is a forest tile nearby for easy timber harvesting.

As far as order of construction goes, I follow something along the lines of PALU's protocol.  The absolute first, and most critical element of any settlement is the cellar.  I often build cellars all over the world, as food caches.  When I worked in Alaska, one of the first things we would do when making a new camp is build a "tundra fridge", or a section of tundra cut down to permafrost.  It really does preserve food remarkably well. 
Anyway, cellar comes first, then a sauna/smoker for preserving food.  Traditionally, ancient Scandinavians would build the sauna first and then sleep in there whilst constructing the main house.  This is a very sensible system.
After constructing the sauna, the next steps just depend on your situation and your goals.  If my character has poor building/timbercraft skills, is nomadic, or lacks specialized axes, i may just use the sauna permanently as my base (or one of my bases).  For most characters with decent building skills, I will build a simple 4x4 cabin which seems to be sufficient for most needs.  For skilled builders or more sedentary characters, I will build a large compound with several buildings and plenty of fenced-in space for livestock and farming.  I don't have a formalized layout that I prefer, I just do every character differently depending on the priorities, and what the area has to offer.

[DfDevadander]

As to a home site, for me, I like to be away from towns as human activity diminishes animal activity. I like to be near water, generally building at 11:00 of the lake for some reason. I spread shelters around my hunting and trapping areas, some containing remote cellars.
 Establishing a building is usually done so I can smoke meat vs dry/salt/roast. For me this building usually ends up being renovated into a full home/settlement.

I usually build at around 10 or 11 o'clock to a big lake myself; gives the best view of the sunrise over the lake, and you get the most sunlight through your windows in that position of course, with neither of those things factoring into the game it's all just role play for me lol

[mlangsdorf]

In addition to the comments above, I like building on one of the major rivers - either the one that runs SW from Koivulaset territory into Driik territory, or the one that runs south from Kaumolaiset territory into the gulf near Njarpez territory. Setting up on those rivers makes it easier to turn furs into tools - you head out from your base on a raft loaded with furs, and come back with fine and masterwork axes.

The Koivu-Driik river is safer, but game is a little less plentiful. The Kaumo-gulf river has more game generally, and access to the Reemi (nearly as good trade goods as the Driik) and the Njarpez (very dangerous, but the best loot in the game).

Another thing I like to look for is a wide open pine marsh near my homestead. It is a lot easier to track game across a pine marsh than through a forest or heath, and easier to run them down, too. The bigger, the better - a couple of kilometers across (20-30 map tiles) is great. If there's a mountain or hill nearby, that's even better: you can move onto the hill on the overmap, look for game, and then chase them down across the march.

Like everyone else, I build a cellar first, usually next to the water. That's the primary tanning station. I'll build 1-2 cellars next to it by mid-summer, so I have a fresh meat/tanning cellar, a dry/smoked meat storage cellar, and a plant cellar - I've lost a couple of carcasses to rot when they where at the bottom of a list of smoked meats.

I usually build a smokehouse of doors first - 4 corners, 2 walls, and 6 doors alternating between them.  Something like:
CDC
DFD
W W
D D
CDC

The alternating doors and walls saves you a bit of effort compared to just building walls.
I usually expand it by building a 6x5 addition to one side, giving me a lot of extra space. By end of summer, I usually have enough spare meat to hire a villager to cut down trees for me, and various masterwork axes to help with the building. That gives me a 3x5 interior space for crafting and storing stuff.

Although fishing with a rod works, I find that fishing with a net is better. Setting two nets in the water takes about half an hour, and then you come back 24 hours later to find more fish than you need. After the first couple of weeks, my tribesmen tend to stop setting nets unless something has gone badly wrong - after you've set enough trap fences to get a reindeer or two a month, food stops being a concern.