Wilderness survival

I’m having a lot of trouble with wilderness survival since it seems like initial placement to salt water is essential. With no access to a swamp, is there any use for raw pelts?

I’ve been starting up wilderness games with the challenge of not encountering a zombie or entering a pre-existing building, and I basically die 90% because I walk for miles and miles looking for a swamp to settle down. Along the way a moose or a pack of cougars will get me, or I’ll freeze since I have no way to make new clothing. I thought I could avoid the freezing by periodically warming up with a fire, but being near a fire doesn’t seem to improve warmth by a very large degree.

I feel like I’m missing something and its not an issue with the game. One thing I’ve noticed is that there seems to be no “fur pelt” item anymore, even though it is listed as an ingredient to many recipes like the fur loincloth and fur foot wraps.

Small fires don’t give much heat, you need to let it grow a bit.

There are two fur items: the tanned pelt (6 volume) and a small piece of the pelt (1 volume). I forgot their exact names.
Some recipes allow using either.

If cars don’t count as structures for the purpose of your challenge, you could smash the seats apart for leather and thread.

You could start in summer not to freeze early on. Or you could tank the frost by having a very tough character, capable of beating up bears while frozen.

Yeah I noticed some inconsistency with fur crafting when I started tanning fur pelts. It was a royal mess and most of the names did not connect either.

I guess this post belongs in the suggestions forum but it seems like there should be possible to make minimum quality gear with raw pelts. Or maybe the harmless animals like squirrel and opossum should drop a smaller pelt that can only be used to make such items. Just bare minimum for warmth stuff, like foot/hand wraps, turbans, blankets.

I’ve used the search function in the crafting menu to find said pelt crafting recipes. I recall bark from some readily-available trees being needed, rather than salt. Hmm. Will have to try wilderness survival again. Usually my primary issue is getting enough fluids to keep hydrated, lol. I typically steal a couple sheets to use for basic warmth and makeshift-slings before heading off into the woods though, I don’t know if that’s ‘cheating’ by ‘full forest survival’ definitions.

Makeshift shelter to get you out of the elements. It’s in the construction menu. Hardest part of that is getting enough pine boughs. Though you’d think one pine tree should be enough honestly. Only get a few from it.

If you’re using More Survival Tools and reached level 3 cooking, you can dry pelts over a fire. o3o