The Long Dark update!
I last posted
about two weeks ago, at which point I was 70 days in and still sitting in the Camp Office. I've roughly tripled that--I'm over 200 days now. The old mark on the previous run was 162, and I've been thinking 200 is possible for awhile, mainly because I found all that ammo.
I forget how long I ended up staying at the Camp Office, but it was the
sewing kit of all things that made me decide to leave! I only brought one, I think, and somehow didn't find any in Mystery Lake, so I wasn't able to repair my clothes any more. Consolidated the supplies (which meant harvesting and repairing some tools at less-than-optimal points) and trekked back. No serious problems. Home sweet home.
Still not out of ammo. I actually thought I was getting close and then remembered I wasn't counting the 8 bullets I accidentally loaded into a second rifle. I'm down to 13, though, so I'm using them all pretty efficiently. I try to use the deer/wolf trick so that pretty much every shot I take results in around 30 lbs of meat, and as long as I'm reasonably patient and willing to try a few times (and I start while I still have at least several days' worth of food from the last success), it always works eventually.
It's hard to say what strategy is optimal at this point. Staying inside and just eating, drinking, and sleeping, carries no risk with it and does very little to degrade clothing. On the other hand, if I supplemented all that meat by camping out in a fishing shack, the food would last longer, but the clothes would need more repairing and there'd be a much greater chance of death. And fishing lines snap, which costs scrap metal, which is finite and needed to keep the hatchet and knife in good repair, which I need for taking the meat off of any kills. So, lots of variables.
At this point it kinda feels like the only mark ahead of me really worth shooting for is a full year, but that'd probably be tough. If I get 30 lbs. of meat from each bullet, my remaining ammo translates into roughly 65 days' worth of food. After that, I can still pull the same trick and induce the wolf to attack me and fight them off, and then just wrap up my wound. I still have enough antiseptic and crafted natural remedy bandages to survive dozens of attacks without risking infection, and I've got a
lot of antibiotics to fend off infection after that.
My matches, however, are degrading pretty fast. I left a pack in an adjacent house (I think), because they don't degrade until you pick them up. And I do have two firestrikers, though I don't think those can be repaired (still, together they should give me 15-20 fires, and I always make a point to keep fires going to get the most out of each one). And after that I have the magnifying glass, which has to be used outside (risky) and only on sunny days.
And the scrap metal, which could be a problem, should still last a long while if I only use it to improve the knife and hatchet. So maybe a year's plausible in this run, if I'm willing to grind it out after the bullets are gone.
Either way, I broke my old mark and hit 200 days, which was my goal through most of this run. I'll keep going and probably decide, based on how things go, if I think I have a good chance of hitting 300 or beyond.
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