Burning an effigy

[Tungsten Whitmarsh Cadow]

1) Burning an effigy is supposed to keep the baddies away. Does it eventually destroy the effigy? Cause it took me awhile to gather the parts.

2) I'm having trouble finding booze. The last time I went to the plane I used about 60 arrows before I could run away. Seems like I'm hitting the cannibals with arrows 8 times and they're still not going down. Ran out of bones and alcohol but still had a few sticks and feathers.

[Abs]

Small Effigy burns for 10 minutes and breaks into 5 bones, 3 skulls and 3 rocks. Large effigies burns for 20 minutes and breaks into 14 bones, 9 skulls and 6 rocks. I fill up on the booze in the caves. Its a one shot in the head with an arrow for cannibals.

[Tungsten Whitmarsh Cadow]

I haven't figured out where the crosshair is on the bow so I tend to aim for center mass.

[GenSec39]

I would recommend to change your priorities. Burning effigies indeed scare cannibals away but it is not a panacea - they do not grant 100% guarantee of safty. And nothing will scare away mutants.

Besides, building them is kinda costy and dealing with cannibals is rather dangerous, especially if you started the game not so long ago. Compact base with few defensive structures and traps will help much more.

Even more, while you are learning to play, I would strongly recommend not to build any long term an costy structures. Instead, keep exploring the world and build small and cheap camps where you need. Hunter's shelter, bofire, water catcher and meat dryer (optional, because cannies will steal your food) - that's all you need.

If you have nothing to defend - you have nothing to lose. All important equipment is always in your inventory anyway. Later on, when you explore the map and get more experienced - you can plan your long term structures.

As to the aiming with the bow - when you aim, you cam see horizontal stick, directed ahead - that's your crosshair (little to the right from it). I'd recommend to build a stand with a traget and spend few minutes practice your shooting skills.

And if you want to kill cannies with a bow - always try go for the head (one-shot), because they are very tanky. I make body shots only if I want to lure them into a trap. And don't forget to collect all the arrows from killed enemies.

[RequiemsRose]

Burning effigies is often not worth the hassle honestly. Supposedly it helps scare away the cannibals, but in practice, it's not actually great at doing so. They give it slightly more of a wide berth than they would a standard, significantly cheaper, standing fire in the vast majority of cases. I find it more practical to burn the bodies directly and make some lovely armor out of them that helps me murder even more of them a bit more safely. It's worth trying out, it works sometimes, just don't invest a bunch of time in making defensive effigy lines expecting them to act like a "get out of murder free" card you can light when overwhelmed. You will end up painfully disappointed by that strategy.

For booze, your best bet topside is the beaches and locations with more luggage, but the real place to farm up booze or most other resources is the caves. Caves respawn their loot when you re-enter them, so as long as you can find some booze in a cave once, you can keep going back as often as you need for more. Bonus that in almost all cases, barring one exception I can think of off the top of my head, enemies within the caves do not respawn, so you only have to beat those once to farm the cave for it's resources.

Also worth mentioning that most enemy attacks are very linear, which also means they are generally easy to avoid with a simple side-step. This applies to both fighting them and running away. If you want to fight them with melee, strafe and stab is super effective. If you want to run from them, you can do so and just serpentine through the forest. If you have headphones you can even evade by sound alone, they are very noisy so you'll hear them coming and can sidestep when you do. I have avoided a ridiculous number of attacks I never actually saw coming because I heard it instead.