Damnable URW, stealing all my free time again. I'm not sure what happened. I hadn't touched the game for months, and the next thing I knew, it was 2 AM and I was squealing with glee over my new bear skin.
I chose the “abandoned camp” scenario. I started, as promised, in an abandoned camp, with a shelter and a few tools, but I wasn’t overly happy with the location. There was no water nearby; I was in the middle of a forest. So I grabbed the bits of meat and whatever tools I could find, and set out to find a town. I was in Driik territory, so I knew there’d be some nice settlements around.
I wandered for a few days, setting up small traps here and there in locations where I had found animals. I stopped to fish now and then to keep from starving, but the going was hard.
Eventually, while following a river northwest, I stumbled upon a small Driik town. They had some cows, a baker’s shop, a tool shop, and many friendly townspeople. I had nothing to trade just yet, so I continued on my way a bit further up the river, to where I found some rapids. I set up a camp, caught and roasted a few fish, and decided I wanted to settle here permanently.
It took me several months to cut and haul all the wood and then build the walls of my house, and another month to take care of the floor, ceiling, fireplace, and bed. Meanwhile, I would take long hikes now and then to look for good hunting/trapping grounds. I spotted a few forest reindeer a ways north of me, but they were far too fast for me to hunt down, so I bought a shovel in the town and built a trap fence with a few spike trap-pits in it. I built a small shelter nearby to sleep in during this work.
At last, I had my very own home! My next goal was to build a raft, but unfortunately you need rope, not cord, to build one, and I had no leather. Without anything to trade, I had no way to buy a cow from the village, so I decided to just sneak in at night and kill one of the animals. They beat me up pretty bad, crushing my left arm severely, but I managed to escape with a bull’s skin and enough meat to hold me over for a long while.
I built my raft and started on a large fence to surround my property. I left one side open towards the water, assuming that the fast-moving water wouldn’t freeze in winter and leave me exposed. I also put some spiked trap pits in the fence, figuring it might be an easy way to catch some more animals when I was away.
Checking my northern trap-fence now and then, I caught myself a few reindeer. I had more meat than I could carry! I set the skins to tan in my temporary shelter and hauled as much of the meat as I could manage back to my settlement, where I started it smoking in the house. It was also getting to be the right season for harvests, so I wandered around the fields by the settlement stealing vegetables when no one was looking. I didn’t eat these, but rather stored them in my cellar for planting in spring. Assuming I would survive the winter, of course. But it’s hard to operate on the opposite assumption.
I went on a few other long walks, including one towards a settlement one of the townspeople told me about not too far to the east. Sure enough, there was an enormous settlement there – a cluster of four or five separate little towns, among which there was just about every type of shop! If I ever needed to trade for something, this would be the place to do it.
On my way back from such a walk, I nearly walked straight into a Njerpez camp, stopping just in time to go around it. It was only a few tiles from my home, and I prayed that they wouldn’t bother me.
On another walk up north to check my traps, I spotted several large elk on the other side of the river in a marsh. I noted the place where I had seen them and, after checking my established trap fence (skinning and cutting up the two stags which had been caught in it and setting the skins to tan by my shelter), I headed down that way to build another.
It took me several days to build this second trap fence, and I set up another shelter nearby for my stay. Fortunately I had brought plenty of smoked meat with me on the trip. I saw several elk in the marsh while I was building, but could never get near enough to one of them to attack it. Finally satisfied with my work, I headed back home, collecting my tanned stag skins on the way.
This had been the first time I had been away from home for more than a day. As I approached the fence around my house, I was startled by a soft snorting sound coming from within. Peering through the fence I saw an enormous bear rummaging through my things! Seemingly curious, it walked part of the way toward me, but didn’t come too close. Nervous about this huge, dangerous animal, I slowly tried to lure it toward one of the traps, but it wouldn’t step onto it. How had this bear even gotten in there?
I figured I had better check my fence for vulnerabilities. Around the other side, I found a reindeer dead in one of the traps. Perhaps the bear had climbed over it?
I knew I needed to get the corpse out of the way and reset the trap before the bear could get to me, but the corpse was too heavy to move. I took a deep breath and decided not to waste it. I quickly skinned the reindeer, alert at all times for the bear, who was still keeping his distance. I then hacked the corpse to manageable pieces and tossed them inside the fence.
While I was concentrating on this, I heard a loud SPLAT and a groan. Looking to my right, in the very next trap pit, I saw the lifeless bear impaled on the spikes. I skinned and cut him up as well, then reset both traps. I smoked as much of the meat as I could (as I was running low on cord), set the skins to tan, and finally let out a howl of laughter at how lucky I had been.
After a few days of splitting firewood, I figured it was time to check my trap fences again. After the half-day walk to the northern one, I was disappointed to find it empty. The marsh trap-fence was empty as well. I sighed and decided I’d better expand it, as I was certain that there were elk around and they must have been just going around it in this large, open area. While gathering small tree trunks to make spikes with, I was startled by a large elk wandering around very close to me. Knowing full well that it was faster than I was and I had no chance of hunting it down, I decided to let it be while I expanded my fence. The creature was walking back and forth along the fence, seeming uninterested in getting to the other side.
A few hours later, while building new sections of the fence, I heard a familiar splattering sound. I set down my tools and walked the fence until I got to the spiked trap pit; there was the elk’s corpse impaled on the spikes. It had walked onto the trap while I was standing just around the corner! Not believing my luck, I skinned it and cut it up before resetting the trap, and set the skin to tan nearby. I knew it would take about four days, so I decided to use that time to expand the trap fence even more than I had intended. The meat was far too much to carry, and anyway I already had more smoked meat in the cellar than I knew what to do with, so I just roasted up a good amount of the meat and munched on that while I was working, leaving the rest to either rot or be eaten by scavengers. Between the roasted elk and the numerous cloudberry bushes in the marsh, the work went by easily.
When I was satisfied with the trap-fence, I took a walk to a nearby grove I knew of to get some adler bark. You can never have too much adler bark, I always say. I picked up my now tanned elk hide and spent the day walking back home.
I was disappointed to find my traps empty this time, but my ever-growing pile of large animal skins was enough to keep me happy. I started making some warm winter clothes out of some of them, as well as splitting more wood than I felt I could possibly need over the winter (but not willing to risk freezing to death if I was wrong).
It is now the beginning of September and it’s starting to get colder. Soon it will be too cold to take my trips to the trap fences and I’ll have to start surviving on what I’ve gathered so far. I can only hope that the clothing I’m making is warm enough, and that I will have enough firewood.
1275 Firewoods and 40 Blocks waiting to be split.
I have no idea how much is enough for the entire winter, so I just keep gathering more and more. Anyone have any guesses as to what my chances of survival will be? I also can't find any way to get my face up to green for warmth. It's only at yellow now.
Assuming I do survive, my plans for next year include building more trap-fences (including a really large one a short ways away from the one around my house which surrounds it), possibly training up and finding some good equipment and wiping out that camp (that may take another year), and building another house somewhere else, maybe closer to my other trap-fences so I can smoke meat there instead of hauling it all the way back to my house.
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Topic: Unreal World (Read 302496 times)