Wild Living, surviving the woods without technology!
I recently started a Naked & Afraid game, going pure InnaWoods from nothing to something.
Along the way I’ve been filling what I thought to be gaps or short comings in the progression when you aren’t heading into town to scavenge for modern tools and immediately starting work on reconstituting an RV with a mini-fridge.
You can find the latest release at https://github.com/LambdaSix/Wild-Living/releases/tag/v0.3.1 and the readme covers most of the content added currently.
It is balanced towards playing with a minimum of 91 day seasons, though I’m playing with 90 day seasons for the full effect. Some items are a little overpowered since I’m still tweaking them, the fur backpack comes to mind since it gives 20L storage for 18 encumbrance in addition to a tool loop, but it’s balanced against a survivor not having any other clothes giving storage, think fur cloak and fur boots.
The aim is towards processes that make sense and are at least somewhat realistic for a survivor on their own, I will at some point be doing a book requirement pass for recipes where those recipes wouldn’t be common knowledge or something you can work out with guesswork.
There is a slight exploit that I’ve yet to patch out, you can use eggs to tan fur pelts (a form of brain tanning) so that as a naked & afraid survivor you won’t slowly freeze to death after you manage to kill a creature with a pelt, but then don’t have any salt to tan it with. However, pelts can be converted to hides by scraping the fur off. I’m not sure whether to add egg tanning to hides, or disable the pelt->hide conversion recipes. However given the newer default starting date being closer to summer, instantly freezing to death on Spring, Day 1 isn’t such a huge concern.
The amount of eggs required may go up, it’s balanced on a small deer’s pelt, unfortunately there’s no way for a recipe to vary ingredients based on the size of the input item (or for the pelts to have size information) currently as far as I know without using lots of different kinds of drops which would involve massively changing harvest entries, which would be a pain for intra-mod compatibility.
If you’ve used this mod before, then you probably know roughly what’s in there but I’ve added a few updates since the last version, in a slightly more verbose format than the release note:
- The birchbark & cordage loop backpacks are now slightly bigger (12L) to fit in with the changes to storage limits, probably still needs tweaking. The cordage loop pouch has a variable encumbrance while the birchbark pack doesn’t, both the a-frame variants are fixed encumbrance in exchange for three item loops of 250ml-3L(for axes, shovels, etc)
- The various clay recipes that require leather pelts now accept birchbark as an alternative for waterproofing, and can use natural cordage for handles.The Large clay container needs glue as well to attach the waterproofing to the lid.
- Leather cordage can be crafted and used for natural cordage requirements
- Clay Canning Pot, a 20L clay pot to stand in for the big metal water-bath technique canning pot.
– I won’t be adding Clay Jars for canning, considered it but it doesn’t really work in a feasible way (in terms of realism, not the game mechanics) - Oilcloth, combining a few ingredients and some processes, you can create waterproof canvas. Will eventually be used for making a oilcloth tent, an upgrade to the fur tent.
- Tanning of pelts can also now be performed using Brain Slurry, considering expanding this to tanning hides as well if I can balance it against progression.
- Small critters (foxes, mink, rabbit, etc) now drop pelts, usually just the one ,but it was kinda silly that animals literally known for being hunted for pelts didn’t drop anything except scraps of meat. They also drop a small amount of meat and organs now.
– Other changes:
– Giant Cockroach Nymph, Dermatik Larvae, and the Locust Nymph drop tainted meat.
– Rattlesnake drops hide and a small amount of meat. - Salt Drying, use an Evaporation Dish filled with 20L of salt water in a smoking rack to process salt while busy with other things, you can also process Starch.
- Cattail Rhizomes have a new starch processing chain involving intermediates to reduce the odds of the product rotting or being old by the time you’re done processing. Without a food processor a stack of 20 rhizomes takes 13+5 hours to process into flour, which all but guarantees
flour (old).
– Process Cattail Rhizomes into Starch Water, but have some containers handy since it’s a liquid.
– Partially dry the starch into dried flakes, these last a long time since they’re partially dehydrated.
– Either hand-mill the flakes into flour or use a wind/water mill to grind the flour unattended.
– Enjoy flour from cattail rhizomes that doesn’t immediately come out Old and make sandwiches that last for 2 hours. - Meat Casings and Rennet got a recipe output buff, about 240 cases for a large animal’s intestines and 120 cases for a small animal (120ft/6" )
- Wasteland Sausage can be made from offal (brains,lung,etc) and also used in any recipe that accepts other kinds of sausages, beware the much lower calorific content though!
- Woven Fence, a simpler cousin to the makeshift fence. A few sticks and long sticks and you’ve a very basic livestock control fence.
- Makeshift Still, part of making oilcloth requires Turpentine distilled from pine boughs, so a very basic low capacity still, you’ll still have to find some sheet metal and jars though.
And a lot more content that have yet to be added, check the Issues page for all upcoming content which is mostly added as & when I either need it or find a spare minute in the day.
Anyway, hope someone enjoys this, I’ll probably keep adding little bits and pieces as I find gaps in the progression curve.
