Heading north was a good choice.
At the fortress Bronzearches, Kamuk was able to swap out various clothing items for those with midnight blue dimple dye, some found, some by trade.
In regard to non-cloak items when cloaks are available, color is functionally superficial. Definitely nice to have RP-wise, but not necessary. Aside from slow travel at night, having a cloak with dimple dye (in absence of other color types) when moving through certain backdrops has always been quite helpful. A red rope reed cloak is an equally good alternate, but in this climate, none have been available.
Kamuk also set out to acquire by trade, a 3r steel pick. No luck at all in Bronzearches. At the hillock Boardwhipped, he found one on Fath Cloistermoment, a bone doctor. Kamuk was going to offer Fath a *silver maul*, as this seems in keeping with the activity of most bone doctors, but instead offered a replacement +iron pick+, an exceptional yak leather braies, and a masterwork longfin mako shark leather armor in return. In the same mound was a gelder by the name of Logem Gidthurfath. She had a +bismuth bronze carving knife+. No amount of questioning would reveal the manner in which she came into possession of an improved item.
Kamuk unwisely spent the night at Boardwhipped. No fast moving asterisks appeared on the fast travel map while sleep unloaded the site.
In the morning he headed east.
Prior to the first river crossing Kamuk did a bit of foraging as he was out of food. He spam picked walnuts until he got his climbing speed to drop from 0.0130 to 0.0129. I did try to drop it to 0.0128, but that looked like quite a bit of gathering. He stopped at about 60 nuts.
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Kamuk decided to build camp on the edge of a lake that seemed to be canopied by consistent cloud cover.
He scouted various locations that all seemed fairly decent for a small structure.
What he was really looking for was a place that offered natural barriers to work with, without having to destroy any upward slopes by installing floors. This is the first build without a central persistent campfire lighting the main room. It makes for a dark environment at night.
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Also made a terrarium. It's pretty silly.