Traps stay empty. [[[ Penalties don't apply to setting traps. ]]]

[Buoidda]

Some of you remember the island challenge, no? 

I'm trying to survive with Driiks on a few tile island on winter start, discarding all starting gear, with hurt, helpless and afraid, and ofc no game courses.

Fishing as a primary tactic is a suicide because of injuries. When injuries are gone, starvation is too high. When fishing, the game informs about it being difficult because of penalties. I still fish on spare time to train and warm up. Never catch anything. Mostly sweating time is about cutting young trees for firewood.

So that leaves trapping. Setting traps doesn't say anything about penalties, so I've been thinking they don't count. But I've gotten only one catch - a bird - with three characters. One froze, other drowned. The second character got a hostile forest probably because of spamming a lot of traps and cutting wood without enough sacrifice.

My third character has been sacrificing lingonberries or heather each day and gotten "at ease"-messages and once "you feel peaceful and safe". So I think the spirits should be appeased with all the felling of trees.

I try to use long lines of light traps as 'fence' with the occasional big deadfalls. Actual fence might strain less the spirits but making stakes with stone knife takes forever and I lack enough saplings on the island.

Still no catch. I have following theories of why not:
1) I made a line of traps from sea to sea across diagonally connected land tiles. Are too many of the traps are situated on 'sea'-tiles (zoomed out)? Does that prevent spawning of birds and land animals even on very successful trap set?
2) Do the penalties (39% starvation currently) still apply, even though the game doesn't warn about it? EDIT: No.
3) Running around naked in winter requires practically continuous fire. Even with the daily sacrifice, am I still cutting too much young trees on the same area?
4) Is a three-tile island too small even for trap-initiated spawning, in other words am I always too close? Or, does the spawning occur only on neighbouring tiles, which are sea and therefore fail?

EDIT: Penalties don't apply to setting traps. See bug report below.

http://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=5838.0

[JP_Finn]

1) haven’t noticed that. But my island dwellers generally use 6+ tile islands.

2) yes, penalties apply to trapping edit: penalties apply to crafting traps, not setting them, learn some new everyday!

3) with daily sacrifice, cutting trunks shouldn’t anger the spirits, but if you reset traps daily that adds to the “spirit annoyance”. I prefer setting trap once and only reset when triggered.

4) can’t say, wee bit bigger islands do spawn critters

[paulkorotoon]

Some of you remember the island challenge, no? 

Never heard of it. What are the terms of this challenge? I would gladly give it a try, challenges are fun I guess.

1) I made a line of traps from sea to sea across diagonally connected land tiles. Are too many of the traps are situated on 'sea'-tiles (zoomed out)? Does that prevent spawning of birds and land animals even on very successful trap set?

No, it doesn't. I've got a couple of such traps, and prey gets there as frequently as into the other traps.

[PALU]

I've trapped seals in heavy deadfall traps right on the shore, and have had no reason to believe anything but land/water determines whether something can get into them (there are factors for probability, of course).

I always start my character by making as many light deadfall traps as I can make, although I haven't started any new characters since withes and the new cord logic was introduced. I tend to get occasional birds in my traps, typically on the lower edge of being enough, and no early character has ever caught enough fish to regain the calories spent fishing (although trying to fish when the island is more or less covered in traps is time better spent than idling). A three tile island may well be too small to provide enough birds to replace the ones caught.
The character that made it off the starting island probably started on a 5-6 tile island (though I used a robber start to get rid if the gear and get hurt), and I started in spring (a winter start seems to be very hard, despite you apparently finding some berries still).

I don't think I'd bother making many larger traps on such a small island, although occasional ones to break island covering trap lines makes sense, should a large animal spawn (but I don't think they would, as I don't think anything spawns in the immediate vicinity, so the only thing that could reach you are birds, and, if you're very lucky, seals or beavers).

[Buoidda]

So it was the penalty. My thanks. I guess this is followed by a bug report then. EDIT: It wasn't. See topic starter.

@paulkorotoon

I have a tendency to lose interest on my characters after becoming secure food-wise. So I'm trying to find the hardest possible way to play this game.

The original island challenge was:

Driik (this culture having worst skills), no rerolling attributes. Randomize start for as long as it takes to start in a seemingly tiny offshore island. Might take a good while (this is hardcore). Winter. Njerpez camp. Survive to mainland village. No game-courses.

Then I noticed tiny featherweight characters can lure Njerps onto thin ice and decided summer to be even more difficult. (Going prone makes you not break the ice so easily, that is something they don't do.)

I can't remember the stories, might be still in the old archives. I think a few people shared stories. We also included Islanders for ease of participation (rerolling in home culture until small enough island).

This time I thought the HHA scenario would be even more difficult. Well it is. Maybe there was discussion about this years ago too. Can't access the old posts and don't remember anymore. It isn't like the russian roulette with Njerps. Seems like if the island is small enough not to spawn wildlife naturally and if even the traps don't spawn them, there is no way to survive the winter. Maybe if fishing skill is high enough to drag through the injuries before starvation wins. But not with a Driik. Only escape without steel axe is through swimming training in late summer. The character is well in skeletal state by then. So I don't recommend, it's a pain to play and a bleak existence with next to no hope of survival. 

Try the original version, it was fun 

[paulkorotoon]

@Buoidda, thanks, this sounds really interesting and hardcore! Gonna try it later.