Various questions from a new player

[jonottawa]

Actually, characters with high speed, endurance, and heavy body weight (body weight helps you carry more, which means minimal equipment weighs you down less) can run down big game like elk, reindeer, and stag.

Yes, I just chased an elk for hours (irl) and days (in-game) until I finally got her (she didn't have a scratch on her until I started beating her with my staff.) This character has mediocre weapons skills and I haven't been south to buy a dog yet (I'm still undecided on the dog, they're so overpowered for active hunting.) The tracking mini-game is one of my favorite parts of UrW.

I have another question that isn't about gameplay exactly, but:

Many villages will have a shelter or tiny tent set up. Are those for visitors to the village like the player? I realize you can sleep in the main cabin or the main tent or whatever, but I try to roleplay a little bit and that feels too cheesy to me. But I think it would be not-cheesy and not-exploity to use those shelters/tiny tents on the occasion when I'm exhausted and happen to be in a village with one. What say you, UrW forums?

[Privateer]

As you state any structure will do. That being said 'IF' a village / settlement has (taken the time to build) an actual 'shelter' set up, I usually stay there as RP.

[JEB Davis]

Likewise, if roleplaying and had only visited that village rarely enough to be a stranger to them, I would use the shelter. If well known to the villagers, I would use the common building.

[jonottawa]

Wow, I'm glad others have given that some thought.

Speaking of role-playing, what do you do when a hunting companion dies? Let's say he's from a friendly village. I didn't enjoy my one hunting companion experience so maybe y'all never use the companion feature.

I'm refining my Kipchoge hunting technique. I dropped all my gear except my staff this time. First 3 rounds and the small reindeer buck was laughing at me, but on the 4th round when 'Slightly Fatigued' arrived, I knew I had him. Fun way to hunt.

[jonottawa]

Okay another few gameplay questions:

Does either raw meat or cooked meat or both spoil more quickly on the ground than it does in your possession?

Is dumping raw meat or cooked meat in a hole in the ice so it won't spoil as quickly a viable thing to do?

Has anyone done an in-depth spoilage analysis? Like the exact date when food starts spoiling again and exactly how long food lasts at various times of year, and whether it's actually weather-dependent or simply date-dependent.

Does the 'wrap yourself in furs' while sleeping message confer any actual tangible bonus to the quality of your sleep or is it just flavor?

Edit: And another:

Do the foreign traders despawn or do they just move around very slowly? If they despawn, do the same ones reappear somewhere else or is that particular group with those particular items not coming back?

Hmmm, I just realized I forgot to put my clothes back on after I cooked up the reindeer. It was nice of the villagers not to mention anything.

[JEB Davis]

...
Does either raw meat or cooked meat or both spoil more quickly on the ground than it does in your possession?

Is dumping raw meat or cooked meat in a hole in the ice so it won't spoil as quickly a viable thing to do?

Has anyone done an in-depth spoilage analysis? Like the exact date when food starts spoiling again and exactly how long food lasts at various times of year, and whether it's actually weather-dependent or simply date-dependent.

Does the 'wrap yourself in furs' while sleeping message confer any actual tangible bonus to the quality of your sleep or is it just flavor?

Edit: And another:

Do the foreign traders despawn or do they just move around very slowly? If they despawn, do the same ones reappear somewhere else or is that particular group with those particular items not coming back?

Hmmm, I just realized I forgot to put my clothes back on after I cooked up the reindeer. It was nice of the villagers not to mention anything.

Haha, is your character extra hairy? Maybe they thought it was an animal?

My only answer to your questions is that I don't know about the spoilage, 'wrap yourself in furs' does improve something, I think they despawn at some point, and I doubt the same ones would reappear, they wander though.

I know this didn't help you. But just so you know, I deliberately DON'T want to know analyzed details because that goes against my style of play. Have you read any of my stories, perchance? Those would *illustrate* my playstyle if you're interested.

* They have lots of pictures!

[jonottawa]

Haha, is your character extra hairy? Maybe they thought it was an animal?

My only answer to your questions is that I don't know about the spoilage, 'wrap yourself in furs' does improve something, I think they despawn at some point, and I doubt the same ones would reappear, they wander though.

I know this didn't help you. But just so you know, I deliberately DON'T want to know analyzed details because that goes against my style of play.

I agree that you can overanalyze things and that if you deconstruct it too much you can destroy much of the beauty of the game. I haven't read your stories, but I'll check them out.

[Labtop 215]

If it's cold outside, meat will spoil slower outside of your inventory than inside your inventory.  This bonus also stacks with the cellar, as far as I'm aware.  Once the food is either smoked or dried however, I believe only the cellar will prolong the shelf life of your meat.

Alternatively, meat held by human companions doesn't seem to spoil either, but I think that is only intended so that your companion doesn't starve.

[PALU]

"Wrap in furs" has at least one benefit: it can keep the character warm even if the temperature is such that you'd wake up shivering halfway through the sleep without them.

Spoilage is randomized. It seems a spoilage roll is made at the turn of every day for every item subject to spoilage, with different outcomes for different stacks. The roll is influenced by temperature and cellar storage. It makes logical sense and I don't think that's too detailed to be an issue for JEB Davis. Sometimes you can get unlucky to have things degrade almost immediately, and sometimes they can last a fair bit longer than expected.

A bug/exploit/feature is that things don't seem to be subjected to spoilage when your character is away, so it's possible to go away on a two week trip and then return to find that the raw meat left behind in the cellar hadn't spoiled (I tend to leave raw meat to either spoil or be used for cooking a bit at a time, as dogs can eat spoiled raw meat, but not spoiled cooked meat, so if it spoils it can be used for dog food).

I haven't hired any companions with the new capabilities yet, but in the past I hired them only for the game course event and for robber quest posse collection. Those that died were given a fire burial (which is a pain, as leaving the site blocks the burning process to complete correctly, so you essentially have to sit around in the area through the process, rather than return to the village where you left your cow of burden to collect it so you can bring home the spoils).

I've never encountered the same foreign merchants twice: they're always shown as nameless when looked at (if you return to the same group during the same trip they're known, of course).

[JEB Davis]

Sorry for the wet blanket, PALU.
I must have been in a strange mood... *Urist sketches pictures of a different time, in an unknown, almost unreal world.

[jonottawa]

For the record, I deleted a bug report I posted in error about when you greet someone and ask them who they are and tell them your name. I thought the game automatically took the option to tell them your name or ask them their name away the instant that you performed it the first time and that my game had stopped doing that for some reason. But it doesn't do that until you leave that menu and go to another menu or just ESC out of the conversation and then convo again. I dun misremembered.

Normally I don't delete my mistakes, but I don't like people browsing a thread and wasting time reading nonsense bug reports either so this post in my vanity thread (of sorts) is a compromise.

Another gameplay question which is more style/RP than game mechanics:

How do people tend to cook large batches of meat (like from an elk or a reindeer)? Do you carry it all at once? Do you set it all next to the fire and pick up batches of 10 individually? Do you set it away from the fire and travel a bit back and forth to pick up your batches of 10? Or have you all outgrown roasting and just dry all your meat?

That leads me to my drying question: Does anybody else only dry 19 cuts per tile? Do others consider the 19 cuts for 10 feet a bit cheesy, borderline exploity? Or is it intended? I wonder what the reasoning behind the 19 cuts thing is as opposed to just 10 cuts for 10 feet. It's not like rope is that much of a luxury good, so I guess for a veteran it's kind of a nonsense question. But I pose those sometimes.

[PALU]

Unless it's winter, roasting more than 20 cuts is useless, unless you plan on selling them, as they'll spoil before you can eat them. I tend to roast about 10 and roast a new lot of 10 when the previous one has been eaten, unless the raw meat has spoiled in the mean time.

In general, I try to keep food in the cellar, not carrying more than necessary. With the previous system, that meant drying/smoking 19 cuts at a time (largest possible batches with that system, where cord WAS a scarce resource for early players, and it was used up as well), and the cellar gets placed just outside of the "sauna", so it's just a matter of picking up a new lot for the new order without moving for drying.
With the new system I expect I'll go for 48 at a time, once the "sauna" is ready (my current character is hiking to the nearest village to "borrow" their sauna for smoking).

@JEB Davis: No worries, and I'm fairly sure there are no Noadi mushrooms in DF

[jonottawa]

Unless it's winter, roasting more than 20 cuts is useless, unless you plan on selling them ...

If it's winter, roasting more than a dozen or so cuts (arguably roasting any cuts at all) is useless, because you can dry them ... 90% of the meat I cook, I cook to sell since none of my characters have survived a full year yet and still have many things to buy.

I haven't heard about the new cooking system. I assume there's a thread somewhere. I assume it hasn't been implemented yet? I'm still drying in batches of 19, assuming that's the correct amount if you want to maximize your rope/cord-efficiency?

[jonottawa]

Another gameplay question, this time just confirming what I think I already know: My understanding is that it is impossible for a character to craft a masterwork javelin (or any other item that utilizes the Common skill to create it,) even from a masterwork staff (so it would be foolish for me to try?)

[Privateer]

I haven't heard about the new cooking system. I assume there's a thread somewhere. I assume it hasn't been implemented yet? I'm still drying in batches of 19, assuming that's the correct amount if you want to maximize your rope/cord-efficiency?

 Cooking used to use #1 cord for 10 cuts by default AND up to 19 cuts manually '20 cuts' the increment of the tens column to two used to trigger a second cord.
This used to 'provide' an opportunity to max cord usage.
NOW, cord length is used according to the specific number of cuts you enter.
Cord can be recovered after process.