Water trough for animals with ideas points on

[smurph]

Is there any way to save animals from the first winter if you turn idea points on? They all died of dehydration and when I looked at the tech unlock for it I wasnt even close, I had everything else needed to get them through it though (food stockpiles, warm barn, beds, etc..).

[Philtre]

Animals can eat ice for water as long as they have access to a lake. It will make them cold and unhappy, but as long as they have a warm barn and plenty of food they will be fine.

The bigger problem is wolves/foxes eating your livestock if they are wandering loose, so if you do not have dogs to guard them, it helps to pick a map with a small pond that you can completely fence in as part of your animal pen before winter hits and wolves start to appear.

[Rane]

TBH i never start with animals anymore. I mean, cats, yes. But not livestock and not dogs. I'll buy them from vendors and build my (s) empire (/s) farm. For this exact reason, basically: there's too much else to think about before W1, imo. I'm keeping my dudes alive. Animals come later. By Year 4, 6, 8? i'm swimming in animals. I don't stress about them year 1 anymore.
There's so many wolves and deer now too, it's not like I need them for the meat either, you know?

There's a part of me that's like 'ughhh why is X locked behind Y in IP games,' but the bigger thought, for me, is: meh. I'll get there. Eventually.

[dissent]

If you're willing to re-roll the clan, you can power through the Ideas tiers and get the Water and Grain/Hay Troughs easily by winter. The key is to get one clan member with high aptitude (ideally x8 but at least x4) in either Cooking, Crafting, Building or Hunting. Use 2 points early on to get the Tinkering Bench, allocate ownership to the person with high aptitude, and just get them to spam-craft.

The higher their aptitude (and consequently skill level), the faster the points accrue. With an all-adult starting clan, I've had the Loom, Kitchen, Spinning Wheel, Double Bed and even the higher-tier storage units like Pantry Shelves and Textile Shelf by winter. It tends to make the development curve very short, though, so I now take only juveniles. That extends the game longevity beyond winter 1.

[*[DeD]*Stitch]

On the other hand, having no aptitude for farming, building, gathering, harvesting like in my previous clan it makes progress so slow it's annoying.
Sure it'll drag out the game but I was unable to get a smithy before winter year one, it just wasn't fun.

I like the idea points to an extent but if you don't have good clanfolk there can be a long time between unlocks. It's not a challenge either, get a freezer going and you're set.

[dissent]

When you say no aptitude, do you mean the clan as a whole or just the individual who owns the Tinkering Bench? I never bother much with the overall clan skills, I've gone into games where the aptitude skills were things like Doctor, Lumber, Clothing, etc. As long as there is just one member with x4 to Cooking/Building/Crafting/Hunting, I have the Smithy, Well, Bathtubs and Water Dipper by winter. That's with a clan of six new juveniles with no skills, having just transitioned from Babies.

[*[DeD]*Stitch]

Clan as a whole. As in no clansmen with aptitude for the major important skills.
I just find progress terribly slow in that case.

I like to think that I know what I'm doing, having played a lot of colony sims over the last few years.
Maybe I'm going at it wrong.

[dissent]

I've found the clan skills to be quite a subtle effect. If you get a clan member with x2 to a skill, they only get one extra level in it. At starter levels, you can make that up pretty quickly as they get those first few levels quite easily.

I notice it with Mining skill. My first priority is to hollow out a mountain to get living quarters. If I get a clan with a couple of workers who have Mining as an aptitude skill, that Mining process does go quicker and my quarters are ready sooner. But it's not game-breakingly so. Even with a clan with no Mining aptitude whatsoever, the living quarters are ready after a few days. It just takes a bit longer.

The Tinkering Bench guy needs to be good, though. If you allocate the Bench to someone with x2, each craft they do adds only a little sliver to the progress bar. Put someone with x8 on the Tinkering Bench and each craft takes a whopping big chunk out of the progress bar.

[*[DeD]*Stitch]

I hadn't really bothered with the tinkering bench because it felt more of an end have thing. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is that a game changer.
Had x4 dude just crafting away there and it was raking in points.

[dissent]

Yes. The first thing I do is to uncheck the 'Free Time Only' button on the Tinkering Bench interface. Then I assign my x4 or x8 worker to the Bench, line up the crafts and let him have at it all day long. If I have a clan of six, I have only five workers. The sixth is full-time on the Bench. When you do that, you go through the tech tree like a chainsaw.

I also usually have the Tinkering Bench up by day 2 or 3 latest. The best crafts are Building (Logs and Large Rocks) or Crafting (Straw, Branches, Gravel) because you get all of those basically from the get-go. So by day 3, I'm hammering out the points. Do that and you'll have your Smithy by the end of Summer. With a clan of six new Juveniles - just transitioned from Babies with no skill levels at all - I have Smithy, Well, Bathtubs, Water Dippers and more waaaaay before Winter sets in.

[Grace1957]

Maybe it's just me but that sounds like it takes all the fun and challenge out of the game.

[dissent]

Before Ideas mode, there were no points to unlock things. You simply had to make the prerequisite and you got the tech. So you could comfortably unlock the entire tree in the first Summer. Was it not a fun and challenging game back then?

For me, the fun in the game lies in finding ways to be more efficient, to do more with less, to get the things I need with minimal labour or resources or taskload. The Tinkering Bench offers a number of different crafts: Cooking, Hunting, Crafting, Building, Doctor/Baby Care, Farming and Clothing. Each of those has different resource requirements. Working through each in turn, seeing how quickly I could get the necessary resources and how much of them i could spare, was the fun part.

The Clothing craft, for example, requires a Sack (25 Straw and some labour) and 2 Twine (4 Straw and some labour). The Crafting craft requires 5 each of Straw, Gravel and Branches. What can I afford more at game start - 29 Straw and two stints of labour, or 5 Straw, 5 Branches, 5 Gravel and no labour? Crafting is a clear winner. But is Crafting better than Building, which requires 2 Logs and a Large Rock? What resources can I get more of at game start - Logs and Large Rocks or Straw, Gravel and Branches? Which do I need more for other things? Which can I spare more of? Answering those questions and developing a strategy around it is the fun part.

In terms of challenge, one can ask why we build any of the higher level items or stations. Why, for example, would we craft Leather or Wool clothing? Those make the game easier as they are warm and have no Mood penalty. If you only ever used Sack Cloth clothing, that would instantly make the game more challenging. Firstly because your people would be colder in winter. Secondly because they wouldn't work as well due to low Mood. And thirdly, it would be very difficult to get anybody pregnant with the huge Mood penalty that Sack Cloth garments bring. Just having a clan member conceive would be quite the achievement. So why are we making higher level clothing? Doesn't it kill the challenge?

The way I approach gaming, it's the developer's job to make the game as challenging as possible, and my job to make the game as unchallenging as possible. If the dev makes a game where I'm really struggling to survive despite playing my absolute best, good on the dev. If I can breeze through easily, succeeding where other players are complaining that it's too hard, then good on me.

If I'm playing an RPG where I find some super-effective combination of skills and items that let me kill the game's end boss in one hit, it's up to the dev to make that boss harder. It's not up to me to deliberately build a weak character in order to make the end-boss fight longer and harder. It can be fun to make your own rules in Clanfolk and up the ante. But it will never be as rewarding as a game where I'm legit trying everything I know to beat the game and still really struggling.

[*[DeD]*Stitch]

I kind of agree. My playstyle has become min-max, partial blame lies at Underrail but i also enjoy making my plays as efficient as possible(factorio, anyone?)

If the game gives me gear or styles to make my playthrough easier, than i'll use those.
Unlocking more difficult settings is a good way provide a challenge but i'm certainly not going to purposely gimp my playthrough with inferior gear/playstyles.

I work as a service tech in the process/packaging industry and developed a preference for certain tool types and brands, knowing those are better than the competition. Why would i use the back of a screwdriver to knock out an axle when i have hammer?

[Grace1957]

Everybody has their own style. I just like to play the game rather than the game playing itself.I'm always thinking of challenges to make the game more interesting.Enjoy!

[dissent]

Min-maxing and shooting for max efficiency doesn't preclude challenges. In my latest playthrough, I went with no travellers, only hiring day workers to marry in, and no Sheep. The Mountain trader doesn't buy any easily accessible high-value goods so getting them to two stars and Clean Wool is a major challenge. That means no Plaids or Wool clothing for a long, long time. I had to make do with Fur and Leather until then. But even that is tricky because pigs don't breed fast enough to clothe a fast-growing clan. And without travellers, getting the Forest clan to one star and Hides is also difficult.

As a result, I had a newborn baby in midwinter running around outside following its mother while buck naked. There were no Deer on the map, I had to frantically hunt some Wolves to get enough Hides to clad the wee bairn in Furs. He's a hardy little blighter, though, being hypothermic half the day didn't seem to bother him much.

[Grace1957]

Running around naked sound about right for toddlers