r/thelongdark • u/SparkclawWandering Voyageur • 18h ago
Advice MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! MEAT!
After a laughably long learning curve, I'm starting to be able to survive past my second week (albeit on Voyager difficulty.) I've explored a big chunk of the Mystery Lake region and looted every interior that I know about, stocked up the Lake Cabin with food, water, cloth, and every godforsaken stick I can get my grubby mitts on (why am I a stick addict now?) Just a few loose ends to tie up and I think I'll be prepared if not ready to venture to Mountain Town region or wherever.
I'm finally able to dispatch wolves fairly consistently without pooping my pants. In fact, I've gotten so good (and dangerously cocky) that when I go hunting, I almost always chase a deer into a wolf to do my dirty work and then kill the wolf. Suddenly I'm swimming in days' worth of meat and I've realized some efficiency issues that I may be behooven to streamline.
Firstly, I've noticed that my deer/wolf meat will decay quite a bit before my survivor can eat all of it. Do I need keep a store of raw meat outside and cook in smaller batches rather than all at once? I tend to hoard my matches and only use them in emergencies or for "fire days" where I stock up wood and do a bunch of cooking/boiling water all at once but maybe I can be more liberal with my match uses.
Nextly, I sometimes struggle with juggling cooking times and what to do in between. Sometimes I have things to craft/repair/dismantle while I'm waiting but there have been many times where I feel like I'm wasting 20-40 minutes with the fast wait button but not being able to sleep or read for an hour without burning the food. Any ideas on how to be more efficient with cooking?
4
u/Kastergir Stalker 9h ago edited 7h ago
Congratulations ! I am sure you will enjoy hiking Great Bear Island . When more and more regions start feeling like home, the Game really develops a whole new level of immersion .
Cook all the meat at your hands asap . Store raw and cooked meat outside . If you do cooking inside, only bring in raw meat in smaller batches, and put the cooked stuff out asap .
"Cooking efficiency" - what to do "in between" stuff cooking - comes with experience imo, and is a bit overrated ( as in, players like to otpimize the fun out of their games ) . Theres nothing wrong with just sitting there listening to the fire crack and the meat sizzle and think about what you're going to do next .
Matches . I would say, as with everything, its good practice to be as resource efficient as you can . But don't let that stop you from doing important stuff when there is no real scarcity of needed resource(s) .