How to Survive The Winter Blues?

[Didz]

I have a couple of basic questions about the winter and how to survive it.

Clothing
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3135194633
I'ce tried everything I can think of to persuade my settlers to change into winter clothing. But whilst they have changed their shirts to the winter version they simply refuse to take off their summer straw hats and put on their warmer bobble caps.

I've even tried making them drop the hats, but they just pick them up again despite the facvt that I've changed the Manage Settler Panel to tell them to dress warmly.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Starving
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3135198071
The second question is problably more serious because my settlers are not only cold but starving.

I'm not completely sure why as I'm not sure where all the food suddenly went. I seemed to have plenty in the Autumn when I last checked but then suddenly there was none left. So, I suppose one question is how much food do you need to survive a winter?

The second question is given that the settlers are starving what can I do about it?

There are no plants to harvest as they don;t give fruit in the winter.
My hunters are killing wold deer, and bringing in raw meat and I could kill some of my domestic animals by culling the herds. But I only have one Smoker and its like watching paint dry trying to smoke the meat.

So, any ideas short of praying for a merchant to turn up with some ready meals?

[Philtre]

1. Hats: "Cap" is the premade profile for non-armour headgear; it allows summer and winter hats. Make a new profile, call it "seasonal" or something, move everyone onto it. Only allow winter hats. In summer, change it to only allow straw hats. That changes everyone's hat restrictions with the minimum number of clicks.

2. Food: it's hard to say how much food you need, because it depends on a number of things. If you had a lot of food, but it suddenly disappeared, I would suspect that either it spoiled, or was eaten by wild animals (or your own animals, if they have access) once winter hit and wild food became scarce.

Smoking acts only to preserve meat, so it's only useful during the warmer months. During winter, you don't need to take special steps to preserve food; it will stay fresh as long as temperatures stay below zero, as long as it is stored under a roof, on a constructed floor (not bare ground), in an un-closed area (so that it stays at ambient temperature), and is protected from wild animals (so it needs to be behind walls and doors, not just fences and gates). Note that pets, and domesticated animals that have been trained to haul, can go through doors and will eat whatever they can find if they are hungry.

[Leine]

You want enough food for 12 days, you really aren't going to be making any food during winter.

Ideally you have activities/work to do inside and you just lock your followers inside.

You don't want them doing wood runs during a cold snap.

[bortas]

Originally posted by Didz:

I have a couple of basic questions about the winter and how to survive it.
But I only have one Smoker and its like watching paint dry trying to smoke the meat.

You don't need to smoke the meat. Just use the raw meat for cooking. If you have nothing else left, then hunting wild animals, butchering some of your domesticated ones and fishing are your only options.

To prepare for the first winter I usually set my settlers to not eat raw food and remove barley from the ingredient list in my campfire, so I can build up a nice stockpile of barley, which doesn't spoil regardless of temperature. When the winter comes, I re-add it to the ingredient list, so they can make bread from it. This is one of the easiest ways to stock reserves for the winter imo.

[Zeion]

I just want to say that winter is the best way for trading food and those smoking meat is worth a lot (10+ per unit) so if you can secure plenty of food just go trading them with something worth more like metal traps or those tier 2-3 research table so you don't need to research it.

[Didz]

Originally posted by Philtre:

1. Hats: "Cap" is the premade profile for non-armour headgear; it allows summer and winter hats. Make a new profile, call it "seasonal" or something, move everyone onto it. Only allow winter hats. In summer, change it to only allow straw hats. That changes everyone's hat restrictions with the minimum number of clicks.

The problem I have is that the settlers seem to ignore my instructions in the Management Tab.

I tell them to switch to Caps and they stubborn refuse to swap their summer broad brimmed hats for caps despite complaining about being cold.

Originally posted by Philtre:

2. Food: it's hard to say how much food you need, because it depends on a number of things. If you had a lot of food, but it suddenly disappeared, I would suspect that either it spoiled, or was eaten by wild animals (or your own animals, if they have access) once winter hit and wild food became scarce.

It's a bit of a mystery as I was busy constructing workshops in theAutumn and so wasn't closely monitoring the food situation because I thought I had plenty. [e.g. Over 200 meals the last time i looked, and thats between seven settlers]

I don't really know what happened to all the food and vegetables but I don;t recall seeing any message pop-up stating that food had decomposed which is the usual warning.

However, I did discover why my kitchen wasn't cooking any food.

At turns out that i had prioritised the cooking of 'Packaged Meals' but that the kitchen had run out of Linen to wrap the food in and i discovered the last meal stuck at 94% complete and nothing else could get cooked.

As soon as I changed the cooking priority back to Simple Meal the kitchen at least was able to process the raw meat I killed. Which helped me survive the last two months of winter.

[Didz]

Originally posted by Leine:

You want enough food for 12 days, you really aren't going to be making any food during winter.

Ok! So how many meals do seven settlers eat in 12 days?

Is it 12 x7 = 84?
Or three square meals a day. So (12 x7)x 3 = 252?

Ideally you have activities/work to do inside and you just lock your followers inside.

That's a clever idea but I'm not sure its very practical. If nothing esle there are crops to tend and animals to feed.

I'm not even sure how one locks the doors, even my cats, dogs, goats, sheep and cattle can open the doors in my game.

It does lead on to another question though?

What should I do about the crop fields in winter.?

The first winter I tried to manually manage my crop harvesting and nearly starved to death when I ran out of seed.

This second year I took a hands off approach and left my top cultivationist to decide how to manage the crops herself and it seemed to work much better. However, she was still planting and harvesting late into Autumn and I'm wondering if I should intervene and tell her to 'Harvest Everything' and then delete all the crop fields to preserve the seeds.

Nothing seems to produce fruit in the winter so its pointless harvesting or planting.

Should I just clear all the crop fields and start from scratch in the spring?
Tree's seem to be ok, she was planting saplings in winter and they seemed to survive.

[Didz]

Originally posted by bortas:

Originally posted by Didz:

I have a couple of basic questions about the winter and how to survive it.
But I only have one Smoker and its like watching paint dry trying to smoke the meat.

You don't need to smoke the meat. Just use the raw meat for cooking. If you have nothing else left, then hunting wild animals, butchering some of your domesticated ones and fishing are your only options.

To prepare for the first winter I usually set my settlers to not eat raw food and remove barley from the ingredient list in my campfire, so I can build up a nice stockpile of barley, which doesn't spoil regardless of temperature. When the winter comes, I re-add it to the ingredient list, so they can make bread from it. This is one of the easiest ways to stock reserves for the winter imo.

Sounds good.

The reason my kitchen wasn't cooking raw meat is that I had set it to prioritise package meals and it had run out of Linen to wrap them. Stupid mistake but I noticed before everyone died.

The tips about barley is useful as that disappeared early and I'm now lacking Barley to plant. I though it had been turned into beer or eaten by my animals but I'll check and make sure its excluded from everything except where its needed.

[Didz]

Originally posted by Zeion:

I just want to say that winter is the best way for trading food and those smoking meat is worth a lot (10+ per unit) so if you can secure plenty of food just go trading them with something worth more like metal traps or those tier 2-3 research table so you don't need to research it.

Noted!

I did panic and tried to send a trading expedition to try and barter for food in the midwinter. But it wasn't possible because I couldn't supply my trading expedition with food for the journey.

However, I shall have to do something in the Spirng as I'm short of seed agan particularly Carrots and Barley.

[Zeion]

you can plant in the winter if you have braziers in the middle and set it to high so it will warm those plant and don't make them dying even in cold snap

https://steamcommunity.com/id/doomZeion/screenshot/2274945577065500394/

[Didz]

Originally posted by Zeion:

you can plant in the winter if you have braziers in the middle and set it to high so it will warm those plant and don't make them dying even in cold snap

https://steamcommunity.com/id/doomZeion/screenshot/2274945577065500394/

Oh! Interesting a bit like a greenhouse, only without the glass.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by Didz:

The problem I have is that the settlers seem to ignore my instructions in the Management Tab.

I tell them to switch to Caps and they stubborn refuse to swap their summer broad brimmed hats for caps despite complaining about being cold.

In the screenshot above, you show them assigned to the "Caps" profile. Despite the name, unless you have edited it, this profile allows ALL types of non-armor headgear, including straw hats. You need to either edit the profile or create a new one, and allow only winter hats.

[Didz]

Originally posted by Philtre:

Originally posted by Didz:

The problem I have is that the settlers seem to ignore my instructions in the Management Tab.

I tell them to switch to Caps and they stubborn refuse to swap their summer broad brimmed hats for caps despite complaining about being cold.

In the screenshot above, you show them assigned to the "Caps" profile. Despite the name, unless you have edited it, this profile allows ALL types of non-armor headgear, including straw hats. You need to either edit the profile or create a new one, and allow only winter hats.

That's interesting.

I'll have to double check how it works. i just assumed that as the choices were

    
• All Headgear.
      
• No Headgear
      
• Helmet
  
• Cap
  
• Edited Head gear

That cap literally mean't 'Cap', but what you say makes sense, Perhaps the defau7lt options should have been

    
• All Headgear.
      
• No Headgear
      
• Armour Headgear
  
• Unarmoured Headgear
  
• Edited Head gear

That would have made it clear that you were not actually choosing the cap.

[Didz]

Originally posted by Philtre:

In the screenshot above, you show them assigned to the "Caps" profile. Despite the name, unless you have edited it, this profile allows ALL types of non-armor headgear, including straw hats. You need to either edit the profile or create a new one, and allow only winter hats.

You were quite right!

I did some research and discovered that creating my own Edited Hat and Apparel settings sorts out the problem.

So, now I have.

• Winter Hat.
  
• Summer Hat.
  
• Winter Shirt.
  
• Summer Shirt.

The other advantage is that I'm able to dictate what quality of hat and clothing they should wear which is a bonus.