I’m trying out a woods character. I started in a hermit shack in a massive forest/swamp area, no civilization in site (I played with the world gen to make as natural a world as possible). I’m gonna have some questions and I’m sure some folks here can help me out. First up: the shack starts with some sealed crates, but I need a crowbar to safely open them. I know there are some lockers I can smash for a pipe, but I’m hoping to do this without smashing anything in my base. Is there another way to get a pipe? Can they show up in underbrush, for example?
I also really wanted to do some brewing, but according to the wiki, I have to find yeast first. You also need honey or sugar or maple syrup. Is there any chance of me finding yeast somewhere? Can that appear in the wild? I mean, in reality, you can obtain yeast by just leaving stuff out for a while, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in-game. Same with the sourdough starter. I also don’t know how to go about finding sugar or honey. I have the monster gen set to basic zombies and animals only. Is there any way to find honey? Or am I out of luck for brewing? If so, maybe I should try my hand at modding and put in a recipe for getting yeast…
I highly recommend smashing the lockers, you’ll need A LOT of raw materials for early game and the crates available are great for containing items.
I’ve never used yeast or other brewing items so I can’t give you a decent explanation, but I think there’s an item for collecting maple syrup from nearby trees… a tree tap, I think…?
To get yeast I recommend brewing fruit wine in the summer. It’s a byproduct of the process. I then use the fruit wine as a sleep aid and morale booster for the rest of the year. You’ll easily get more yeast than you can ever reasonably use.
Don’t smash the lockers. Disassemble them after you make a makeshift/stone hammer and a screwdriver. That way you get the sheet metal, which is more valuable in a wilderness start than anything in those crates or even the pipe itself.
Also, you can find pipe at wreckage sites, which don’t show up on the overmap but can be found in wilderness areas. If you see a zombie pilot, that’s a good place to go look for a wrecked aircraft that will have plenty of scrap metal, pipe, and wire if you have a shovel to clear the debris.
Yeah, if anything I’ll disassemble the lockers, but I’m going to try not to. So far I’ve already found some scrap metal in the underbrush. I won’t find any zombie pilots because I turned on basic zombies and animals only, so I’m not sure if stuff like wreckage sites will show up, but I’ll keep my eyes open.
I made some tree spiles for getting sap from maple trees, but it says i need a tool to drill the crust to tap the tree. What tool do I need? Do I actually need a drill? Because it doesn’t seem like that’s within my means, requires a forge and such…
EDIT: Hmm… I found a zombie soldier in the woods. But I definitely have “classic zombies” enabled - so maybe that includes soldiers? Are they not considered “special”?
Zombie soldiers are not special. Special zombies are acid, brutes, shockers, smokers, gasbags, etc - zombies that do something weird, not just zombies that did in better clothing that some random citizen.
You will need a drill to put in a maple spile. You can make forged goods during an innawoods playthrough, it’s just tricky:
Learn Fabrication 3 and collect a pile of rocks. Construct a charcoal kiln. Fill it with wood, you’re going to need a lot of charcoal.
Learn Fabrication 4 and collect a pile of rocks and clay. Construct a clay kiln and load it with some charcoal. Make a clay crucible.
Learn Fabrication 5 and collect a pile of rocks and a huge pile of metal. Construct a rock forge, load it with charcoal.
Make a hammer, anvil, metal tongs, metalworking chisel, and swage and die set.
Make whatever the heck else you want.
You started in a swamp shack, so you already have the charcoal kiln. I don’t think the other resources in a swamp shack are enough to make an anvil (which is like 2 HD frames IIRC) so you’ll have to find a lot of wreckage, but it is possible. You can also use small and medium boulders as basic anvils, apparently.
Thanks. Good to know about the zombies, this is obviously the first time I’m trying that setting.
I know it’s technically possible to forge stuff, but the problem is the metal. My goal is to do this with only stuff I’ve foraged. It’s possible to find scrap metal in the underbrush but it’s few and far between. Honestly it seems very silly that you need a metal drill to tap trees. You can easily tap a maple tree with a simple wooden spike and a hammer (or rock), it just takes longer and a bit of muscle… I wonder how difficult it would be to mod that in… I suppose adding “drilling” to a wooden spike would be easy, but then it would be usable as a drill for other things, and it would be as fast as using an actual drill. Hrm…
Iirc you don’t need drilling to tap a maple tree. Just the metal spike and a hammer.
As for metal, wreckage sites are basically all you’re gonna get. I think there’s a mining mod that lets you find ore, but I’ve only ever used the mod to quarry rock basically so I can’t verify.
I tried it with a metal spike and hammer and it gives me the message “You need a tool to drill the crust to tap this maple tree.” It should be possible to do it this way, but it doesn’t seem to be in the game, unless you have to do something unexpected to do it. I tried (e)xamining the tree (which is what gave me the above message), (a)pplying the hammer (there’s no option to apply the spike), and browsing the construction (*) and action (%) menus, and I don’t see anything. So I guess now I have to consider whether I’ll cheat in a drill or give up on maple syrup until I can get some metalworking going…
I do have the Mining Mod installed, but I don’t seem to have the option to make a bone pickaxe. Not sure what the requirements are for that. And if I need to make the metal pickaxe, well, I need a big pile of metal and a forge and such to do that, so… That leaves me right back where I started.
Bone pickaxe requires Fabrication 5 or so. Maybe 6? That tripped me up on my most recent playthrough. But Mining Mod also includes craftable stone anvils, so it’s not an issue.
So grind up for Fabrication, collect a lot of rocks and wood, and a little clay, and you’ll be set.
Here’s an unusual trick that I figured out in my last Innawoods, Mining Mod playthrough:
*if there’s a cave near your base, chop down trees near it and angle the fall so they’ll hit the cave. Falling trees break cave walls, and release the rocks, coal, and limestone within. Since you need to cut down the trees anyway (for logs and charcoal), you might as well get the coal and rocks.
Yup, figured out just after my last post that the bone pick requires fab 5, so I’ll be grinding that up and trying my hand at mining, it seems. That’s a great tip about the cave walls! I don’t think I’ve found any caves yet but I’ll explore for a bit and see if I spot one. Those are some heavy trees if they can smash apart rock walls just by falling from a standing position.
Yeah, I did play that one years ago. Been a while now. I prefer CDDA really, there’s just so much more to it, but sometimes some of the real-world survival stuff isn’t all implemented quite as I’d like. Still, can hardly complain about such details in a free game made by volunteers, especially considering how many things are already simulated in such detail. But I would certainly be very happy if tapping trees was made a little more accessible, since I don’t see any reason to gate it behind drills and in reality there’s nothing preventing someone from tapping a tree with nothing more than a rock and a stick.
