Harvesting vs Quartering???

[Midnight Sprite]

So for deer you can take like 1 hour and 10 mins to harvest like 9kg of meat. Or just take 1 hour and 30 mins to quarter...then even more time to harvest again at your base?

Is it less smell or something with quartering? You also can't get gut's or hide by quartering that I've found either. So, can someone please help me find what I am missing because it seems useless at the moment and I hope it is not.

[[DOLT]Braidedheadman]

That doesn't really tell the whole story though, and could be somewhat misleading. Quartering, as an activity by itself, takes less time, true. But you still have to harvest the meat bags, wherever you decide to do that, which adds to the total time spent harvesting that animal carcass from start to finish before you get cuts of meat. All said and done, it actually takes longer that just harvesting. The advantage with quartering is that you can effectively move the carcass (piecemeal) to a safer, more sheltered spot to complete your work. It's a strategic decision and, personally, I'm glad to have it as an option.

Let me also just add that people calling for removing a feature that is as useful as harvesting quartering [Edit: oops] is, even if it is only situationally useful (sort of like fishing, no?), simply for the fact that -they- don't use it is rather shortsighted, to say the least. To this day, I have not used a single fishing line to catch a fish (or any fish), but you wont see me calling for its removal. I realize that I'm not important enough and the manner in which I elect to play the game is not important enough to make that call for everyone else. Neither are any of you. That's not an insult, it's just the reality of it.

[ThePlagueBeast]

Tezcatlipoca eredeti hozzászólása:

The Lone Carrot eredeti hozzászólása:

Harvesting takes longer but weighs less, quartering takes shorter but weighs more.

makes no sense at all ...

it is the same stuff ... why should it weight more ?

I can speak to this as someone who has butchered small game IRL (specifically rabbits) and dealt with my own raw cuts of meat. The game treats things kind of funny when it comes to harvesting animals.

In reality you'd have to skin first if you wanted to keep it, otherwise it's an afterthought. Guts always have to be removed for safe butchering. So with those set aside as just parts of the game's mechanics the point between harvesting meat at source and quartering then harvesting later comes down to bones and ligaments/connective tissues.

Bones weigh quite a bit but if you're taking the meat in chunks to fillet later it's shockingly fast to separate at the joints and leave the muscle on the bone. You can knock off all the unwanted bits (in game, the feet and lower legs) without sacrificing too much time AND you get the ability to repack things in a more convenient carrying manner. The downside is then, of course, that you have to carry the weight of those bones and bits that you won't be eating later.

[LokitheWeaver]

IFIYGD eredeti hozzászólása:

Tezcatlipoca eredeti hozzászólása:

the Question is - if there is a decay - regularly - it is frozen - supposed to have no ... or only few decay.

Bodies, human or animal, don't freeze the very second they die. Even if you die of hypothermia, you don;t freeze instantly. It takes time for the body temperature to drop to a point where each type of cellular structure in the body will beign to freeze. And until it it frozen, it will decay. Put raw meat in a freezer that is set incorrectly, and only maintians 1°C (approx. 34°F). Leave it there for afew hours, opr a dozen. Then open the freezer. The meat will show signs of decay. The decay doesn't stop until the meat, hides and gut all drop below their particular freezing point. Which may not be the same as the freezing point of water. Same goes for fish. Out clothing freezes at the same freezing point as water because it isn;t the clothing that is freezing, it is the water they have soaked up.

And even after freezing, meat, guts, fish and hides will slowly decayy due to the cold art "sucking" the moisture out of these things. Same way meat in your home freezer goes funky if it sits in there toolong and gets freezer burn.

Are you certain of your facts? My understanding, having had a number of animals butchered seems to indicate differently. Yes, butchering an animal, in the heat of summer is problematic. But it can be done if you are careful about flies, wash the carcass and place it in a situation where it can cool, quickly after the first step (hide / gut removal.)

Obviously, we are not in the middle of summer, here, and the carcass will cool just from exposure to the snow / cold air. Yes it may take a few hours. But butchers routinely "hang" meat for longer periods, which actually improves them, by stretching the long muscle fibers (as I understand it.)

So why is it that a butcher may hang a sheep / lamb carcass in a cold room (not freezing) for a couple of days and a steer / cow for even longer, without it decaying? Granted that this is for a whole carcass, which would probably translate to "quartered" in the game. But the point is that the meat does not spoil. It will stay just fine for several days, even if not frozen. If there is snow on the ground it is cold enough to ♥♥♥♥♥♥ spoilage.

While you would not "hang" a bunch of cut up meat, the same rule would hold. A low enough temp (below 40 deg F or 3-4 deg C, I believe) and the meat would be fine. Now cook that meat, over an open campfire, which not only removes moisture (needed for organisms that cause spoilage) and kills any organisms already on the meat, but also adds a nice coating of chemical byproducts from the burning wood (think smoked meat) which acts as a preservative.

Just a short step more, with a lower fire temp, thin strips of meat and encouraging smoke to help dry your "jerky" . . . and you have meat that will outlast your character.

[LokitheWeaver]

lionsilverwolf eredeti hozzászólása:

I can speak to this as someone who has butchered small game IRL (specifically rabbits) and dealt with my own raw cuts of meat. The game treats things kind of funny when it comes to harvesting animals.

In reality you'd have to skin first if you wanted to keep it, otherwise it's an afterthought. Guts always have to be removed for safe butchering. So with those set aside as just parts of the game's mechanics the point between harvesting meat at source and quartering then harvesting later comes down to bones and ligaments/connective tissues.

Bones weigh quite a bit but if you're taking the meat in chunks to fillet later it's shockingly fast to separate at the joints and leave the muscle on the bone. You can knock off all the unwanted bits (in game, the feet and lower legs) without sacrificing too much time AND you get the ability to repack things in a more convenient carrying manner. The downside is then, of course, that you have to carry the weight of those bones and bits that you won't be eating later.

Excellent post. Good points (of course I would say that, since I have similar views, that the in game mechanic seems a little arbitrary, almost punishing us for trying to harvest food, when you would be able to quickly remove a haunch at the joint and have a decent amount of meat, even after you removed the hide and decided to just toss the bones - which would seem to be rather silly in a survival situation, when just using them for soup stock could turn them into useful calories.

The one thing you did not mention is that a nice leg would also have some tendons (you did mention ligaments / connective tissue, but not in the context of them being a valuable resource.) And, unless I am misinformed, there is a gold mine of tendon that is fairly easy to harvest, along the spine. That tendon (or sinew) would be quite useful as a lashing, lacing or just to sew skins and furs into usable configurations.

(as a side note, the issue of "guts" is a good one - in my limited experience, getting all those "insides", "outside", without leaving a mess all over the meat is half the battle. An interesting game mechanic might be to require this step, before quartering, but allow a player to harvest a small amount of meat that is accessible without risking punctures of the gut / stomache - perhaps a shoulder or hind leg, if you were careful.)

[Strotter]

Hi,

havent read all the answers but I just quarterd for the first time in wintermute. If i didnt quarter the deer would have given me 8kg of meat. When i quarterd i got x2 that = 16kg of meat.

[SteelFire]

Strotter eredeti hozzászólása:

Hi,

havent read all the answers but I just quarterd for the first time in wintermute. If i didnt quarter the deer would have given me 8kg of meat. When i quarterd i got x2 that = 16kg of meat.

Uh... doubtful. I suspect you got four bags that weighed 4kg each, but that's meat and bones. When you go to use one of those bags you have to do a short harvesting operation on it, which is then you cutting the meat off the bones, and you'll end up with the original 8kg of meat when you do that with all 4 bags.

[Strotter]

Strotter eredeti hozzászólása:

Hi,

havent read all the answers but I just quarterd for the first time in wintermute. If i didnt quarter the deer would have given me 8kg of meat. When i quarterd i got x2 that = 16kg of meat.

Also, before i did that, i took the hide and the guts!

[Strotter]

SteelFire eredeti hozzászólása:

Strotter eredeti hozzászólása:

Hi,

havent read all the answers but I just quarterd for the first time in wintermute. If i didnt quarter the deer would have given me 8kg of meat. When i quarterd i got x2 that = 16kg of meat.

Uh... doubtful. I suspect you got four bags that weighed 4kg each, but that's meat and bones. When you go to use one of those bags you have to do a short harvesting operation on it, which is then you cutting the meat off the bones, and you'll end up with the original 8kg of meat when you do that with all 4 bags.

Ahhhh ok - i havent harvested them yet so u might be right!

[Weizen1988]

SteelFire eredeti hozzászólása:

Strotter eredeti hozzászólása:

Hi,

havent read all the answers but I just quarterd for the first time in wintermute. If i didnt quarter the deer would have given me 8kg of meat. When i quarterd i got x2 that = 16kg of meat.

Uh... doubtful. I suspect you got four bags that weighed 4kg each, but that's meat and bones. When you go to use one of those bags you have to do a short harvesting operation on it, which is then you cutting the meat off the bones, and you'll end up with the original 8kg of meat when you do that with all 4 bags.

This is also what I experienced from my bears. The bag weighed 20 something pounds, and I got 10 something pounds out of it, so yeah rest is bones and stuff. Seriously though, why cant we keep and boil the bones and stuff?

[SteelFire]

Strotter eredeti hozzászólása:

Strotter eredeti hozzászólása:

Hi,

havent read all the answers but I just quarterd for the first time in wintermute. If i didnt quarter the deer would have given me 8kg of meat. When i quarterd i got x2 that = 16kg of meat.

Also, before i did that, i took the hide and the guts!

Oh, well, pro tip, if you're going to quarter the animal, don't take the skin and guts first. Quartering automatically does that for you and is included in the time. You also don't save any time on quartering if you skin and gut it first, so don't waste the effort. Typically, for wolves and deer though, it's not really worth it to quarter. It takes the same amount of time as harvesting the meat, hide, and guts. But, it's still an option and can be viable under some circumstances.

[MythN7]

So i found this trying to find out if theres any benifit to quartering.
And from reading the comments, yes i would agree the time is much less, as quartering is more akin / less than the time to harvet the whole stack of meat.
But i just quartered a bear, right after it was killed, with a fire going beside it.
This is what I have noticed.
cooking the meat right at the fire beside the carcuss. only harvesting each quarter as I cooked it.

-if you dont need the meat its better to quarter as the time for harvest and the auto drop of the guts and pelt nearby is very handy, in a hurry.
-the 4.4kgs from the 8+kg quarter, (so each quarter is like double the carry weight of the meat you get)
-the meat seems to degrade much faster as quarters than as cookable, by the time I got to the last of the 6 quarter bundles, the meat was already in the yellow.

so how can you justify using it as a method to take to base when the weight per cookable meat is pretty much doubled? I mean, a bear already has 29-36kgs of meat from all the kills ive seen. which take multiple runs as it is, not to mention the 11+ kgs of guts and hide.

The only benifits from quartering I can see is:
-gaining the non meat faster if you pick it up instead of the quarters.
-xp gain for quarter then harvest, but not sure if you would actually get less xp, cause harvesting the hides and guts is then lost for xp since they fall to the ground.

The scent seems trivial, if your losing so much quality and the weight is so much more.

Quartering, should reduce the weight, not make it more cumbersome, so I really dont get this mechanic.

[jswilliams]

With quartering it simply comes down to how long you think your fire wherever you're at is going to last. On Interloper, it most of the time will not be long enough to harvest a bear. You'd have to be very, very lucky. So yes, it can become a nightmare. I quartered a bear at waterfront cottages and had to spend basically hours in game time making trip to/fro from MissinThroat.

I would have gotten KILLED spending all that time at cottages harvesting into the dead of night and carrying Scent. NOT THIS KID.

So, light fire and fuel to over a 2 hour burn time, quarter. 2 hours for a bear. Hide and 10 guts done as part of the deal. Harvested 2 steaks and cooked them with the little fire time remaining.

It was early evening and had some light fog but enough visibility I risked it. Grabbed 1 meat bag, 2 cooked steaks, and hide and went across ice to MissinThroat.

Harvested meat bag in peace and quiet of my house.

Next day made three trips getting 5 (?) bags and 10 guts. Used the harvesting time indoors to warm up for next trip.

Next day ferried meat down in manageable weight/Scent trips to fish hut and cooked it all. No worries about blizzards, winds, whatever.

So sure, on Stalker or Interloper give it a go harvesting and cooking a bear or moose away from your base as night approaches. See what comes your way as far as predators and wind/weather fiascoes. You will tap into new levels of rage...

[MythN7]

jswilliams eredeti hozzászólása:

With quartering it simply comes down to how long you think your fire wherever your at is going to last. On Interloper, it most of the time will not be long enough to harvest a bear. You'd have to be very, very lucky. So yes, it can become a nightmare. I quartered a bear at waterfront cottages and had to spend basically hours in game time making trip to/fro from MissinThroat.

I would have gotten KILLED spending all that time at cottages harvesting into the dead of night and carrying Scent. NOT THIS KID.

So, light fire and fuel to over a 2 hour burn time, quarter. 2 hours for a bear. Hide and 10 guts done as part of the deal. Harvested 2 steaks and cooked them with the little fire time remaining.

It was early evening and had some light fog but enough visibility I risked it. Grabbed 1 meat bag, 2 cooked steaks, and hide and went across ice to MissinThroat.

Harvested meat bag in peace and quiet of my house.

Next day made three trips getting 5 bags and 10 guts. Used the harvesting time indoors to warm up for next trip.

Next day ferried meat down in manageable weight/Scent trips to fish hut and cooked it all. No worries about blizzards, winds, whatever.

So sure, on Stalker or Interloper give it a go harvesting and cooking a bear or moose away from your base as night approaches. See what comes your way as far as predators and wind/weather fiascoes. You will tap into new levels of rage...

instead of quartering on interloper couldent you build a snow shelter in front of the bear and just harvest it from inside?

I do this often when cooking, place a fire infront of the shelter and cook away while inside.

[MythN7]

I think quartering would be better if it either decayed way slower than the cookable meat. or it weighed less instead of more, so a 4kg quarter would be like 8kgs of meat later.
Yes if your not in it for the cooking or food, then yea, on larger kills, quartering is more efficant for harvesting the hides and guts.

But the whole point of quartering is for transport of the carcuss, I spent 10 years working in a pork plant, so yea, I know first hand carrying a quartered body is much easier than all the grocery slabs.

[MythN7]

Also, quartering should take longer than harvesting if you are intending to keep the hides and guts in tact.
Cause you have to first cleanly peel the hide, where quartering in my experience, you leave the hide on and it is what keeps all the meat tight for the transporting.
also, you have to either damage the guts or do more than normal quartering to get them all out.

I really think quartering should reduce the quality of the hide and amount of guts, because of the speed you gain. And have it easier to haul instead of harder.

then again all my experince is in pigs and boars and cows, in a factory, not wildlife.