Surviving winter without warm clothing

[Trogdor]

I'm in the middle of the Winter Month now. i had a bad trapping season, and only got maybe 6-7 small game. I did get a lucky reindeer harvest when I shot one out of my window. The problem is, I didn't get much to trade until it was too cold to travel, so I ended up with little in warm clothes.

The current situation is; the temperature is about a quarter of the way to the middle line. I can go outside to get water, or for short periods of labour in the late morning/afternoon. I have ~4K firewood, ~1200 lake reed roots, and maybe 40lbs of smoked meat. The reindeer fur I tanned is sitting on my bed to keep me warm as I sleep, I'm unsure if I should try to make it into clothes or not.

Basically, I'm trying to figure out how to survive this situation. I got as many logs as I could in the early winter once I noticed my firewood consumption was going way up to keep warm, but it's too cold to keep chopping down trees. I can't stay outside long enough to fish anymore, but had little luck ice fishing anyways. Any help?

[☃]

Build a Sauna or Fireplace in a shed big enough to hold it and a single open space to huddle in the doorway. You only need to burn 5 fire wood and 5 twigs a day to keep the space warm. And it will stay very warm. If you skip a day, you need to burn 2x the wood to get it back to temp for smoking food.
Wooden Log Type Shelters can be taken apart and the parts recycled to create larger shelters later. Including the stoves and saunas, benches & beds etc...
When you are sleeping and building the shelter (it takes some time to build), you will likely need to stay close to your fishing hole for food and water, and burn a fire every night out of the twigs you will get from carving logs. I don't know the exact math, but this is from the wiki on wood and burn time:
-Heat and length of a fire
The time a fire take to burn seems to only depend on the quantity of wood used. In a fireplace, it seems to follow the following equation :

Y = 8x + 10 This basically means that if you have 'x' blocks of firewood, it will take 'y' minutes to burn.

For example,

40 blocks of firewood takes 5 hours and 30 minutes game time to burn off.
A raw tree trunk can burn for over a day
Also, the more wood you burn at once, the more heat it will produce. So, if you wish to produce a lot of heat for a long time, you'd better make a large fire from the beginning, rather than progressively adding wood.

The origin of the burned wood (spruce, willow,...) does not change the fire length nor the heat produced. (https://www.unrealworld.fi/wiki/index.php?title=Fire)

So what I tend to do, in harsher than average survival situations in the game, is to build the small lean to shelter as close to the water source as I can, then burn a raw tree each day to stay warm because I know it takes a whole day, and start building the more long term log cabin or Kota shelter as close as I can to the first lean-to shelter, fire and water source. I usually keep my log burning and add a new one when the time rolls around.
And I haven't confirmed, but I suspect that we can use Grouse Leather and other bird skins to make our Kota Shelters, because I know we can use Pig Leather to make Kota.
So while you are doing that whole gig, be sure to utilize small lever traps in your immediate adjacent territory, because the birds don't care if the trap has nothing in it. If the trap is in a forested area, they will just wander into them out of curiosity.
The birds you will catch can provide an excellent source of survival income to start, assuming you skin and process the hides into leather for crafts and trade (and probably clothing and shelter supplies too, but I haven't tried that so don't hold me to that).
I've never been as bad off as you are, but when I'm bad off, that's how I roll my shelter game until spring rolls around. If I'm in a bad area I use the Post Spruce shelter to my advantage and burn a raw log in front of that when I need to rest or get warm when traveling less than prepared.

When in doubt, burn a tree to stay warm for the day.

[☃]

And if you have a shelter, just stop burning so much wood to keep it warm. You only need to burn 5fw and 5 branches a day to keep it warm, like I was saying. Oh and if you haven't figured it out yet, you can sleep on the green spruce twigs for bedding, and also animal furs. The better the bedding the better the effects of sleep and the greater the warmth.

[Trogdor]

I have a wooden cabin, maybe I made it too large. The interior space is 4x3. I assure you I need to burn that much firewood though, I go from Hot to Chilly a few hours from the fireplace going out. But I can't go out and make a smaller shelter or take apart mine, because it's too cold to go outside for more than an hour or so. I haven't seen a bird in probably a month in-game, and I haven't caught one in my trap line in two.

All my food is already smoked, I can't fish for more because it's too cold. Basically I just need to find a way to survive until Spring when I can get more food and build a smaller sauna. I'll try the spruce twig bedding, I only knew about the furs.

[☃]

Are you keeping your door closed? Doesn't sound you are keeping the door closed by the likes perhaps. That isn't what I would consider to be a large cabin anyway. Anyway... it is probably completely possible to survive naked and alone with only a hand axe, a punt or raft, and a fishing net and near or on a set of rapids. Buy burning a tree everyday. and being near itto do your fishing. When in doubt, burn a tree. In the fireplace even.
But as long as your cabin has all the walls, door, and roof shut in it really does take a lot less firewood to keep it warm. Unless it is a new bug or this has been changed.

If you are near to any settlements, you can abandon the camp you have and just use the Npc's for housing until spring too.

[☃]

I want to finish my current cabin now and test. I'm in Pearl Month so.... yea.

[☃]

Anyway wow, the mechanic is pretty complex. I can see what you might be going through during the coldest part of the year, with improper clothing. All it takes is the right clothing to survive without any need of a fire... but yes. If you don't have good clothing to cover your body, then you will be stuck in a very harsh loop in a small area.
Everything seems reasonable to me in terms of what I am going through in Soil Month (Latter Winter), inside a cabin that I finally finished that is 2x4 inside. I am testing the "insulation" of the cabin by staying naked and passing the time to watch the drop in inside temps. There is no way to survive outside in the freezing cold and snow still for more than about a half hour. Which all seems pretty reasonable. The Temp bar sits at just below the blue/red thresh hold during the day, and drops to half below that line at night. Not the coldest part of the year, but cold enough to feel it sitting naked and eating smoked pig cuts in my tiny cabin.
My bed has spruce twigs as bedding only, and is on a fabricated bunk that sits two spaces from the fireplace and the cabin has three shutters. I keep my clothing on hand in my inventory to avoid frostbite injury if I need.
I'm just testing the heat and insulation, and so yes it does seem like we NEED to burn more wood the more shutters and open doors we have on our cabin. Heat loss I guess works, and is a thing for our shelters.
However that being said, I'm still able to easily survive the current season by just burning the wood needed, as it is needed to keep the cabin warm, but it is surely more effective when I burn a very hot fire in the fireplace for a very long time. The hotter the stove, the longer it takes for the stove to cool down, which is what "seems to be" heating the room regardless of shutters and doors. Which is realistic really. So if that is mechanically true within the code, then kudos to the devs for that.
I am not entirely sure if the shutter windows COUNT in the cabins heat loss time, but from what I am experiencing right now, is that the cabin isn't cold until the stove is regardless of an open door or not. But there is no way to tell how warm the stove is (which could be a suggestion for the devs to add perhaps). So what I'm saying about the stove cooling off could be suspect.
Burning the 5 split wood and 5 branches is all that is needed to keep a smoking session going, but wont be enough to heat the cabin in the cold months. You need to keep your cabin warm with hotter and hotter fires until the coldest part passes and you can burn less and less until spring thaw.

So I guess... when you are really cold, just throw a whole tree on the fireplace. That will keep your cabin glowing for a whole day, and stove warm for what seems to be a few hours after it has burnt out.

Hope your character survives the cabin fever. The Sweating just makes you thirsty.

[Trogdor]

Door is closed. I'm on a lake, so no fish. I might be able to make it to an NPC encampment now that I think about it; I wonder if it's worth the risk. Maybe my fireplace is bugged, but once the coals go out I definitely don't get warmed up any further

[☃]

Well it does take about a full day to burn a whole raw tree (not the slender young ones, or saplings we use for tying equipment). So there is that. There is usually plenty of trees around. It isn't like Finland is a desert.

[Trogdor]

To add: I'm in the South-East of the map, and the temperature bar is only 1/4 of the way to the middle bar. If it gets any colder the next month, I don't think I'll make it. i do have three shutters, i wonder if that was a mistake. Although next Winter i'll just build a small sauna and keep much more firewood on-hand. Should I be doing large fires then, or just enough to keep myself going since i'm worried about firewood consumption?

[☃]

Large fires. The Wiki suggests large hot fires that burn a long time too. I suspect shutters have to do with the insulation of the cabin, but I couldn't tell you for sure. I just know the devs like to pay attention to realistic details and that would be one that sort of goes with this. I would like to see possibility of tacking animal hides or leather over the windows and being able to open and shut them. Possibly. But I mean, that is just more things for them to do... and I know how much we ALL want to see the roadmap already laid out for v4.0 so I wont really cry for it. I'll keep it in mind when I build a small sauna though for my homestead and leave it with no shutters and try to compare. For the fun.

[☃]

Once it gets to the coldest part of the year, I suspect you will have to burn a whole tree per day regardless because of your improper clothing. Which makes me want to see what happens now if I put seven or eight raw trees on my fireplace. How long does that burn for I wonder...

[☃]

Ok so yea. Burning more than a single Tree Trunk raw and unprocessed doesn't make the fire go beyond a days burn time. So don't waste wood like that probably. But burning a tree trunk a day will certainly heat your cabin for that days time (24 hours). Shutters don't seem to matter? CAn't be 100% sure on that at all, but closing the door, and burning a tree trunk that lasted was going to last until midnight by inspection (look command) while I slept from the start of Night until Small Hours on a bed of spruce twigs while naked kept me "Warm" when I woke up.

I think you can survive on using a whole tree to keep warm each day when it gets really cold. I'm pretty sure of it. It will just be the cabin fever you will worry about because you wont be doing much else but sitting in the cabin watching the fire burn each day.

Going with the NPC's isn't actually always a sure bet, as sometimes I notice they don't have fires going and seem to live with out them in the winter. Starting a fire for them, they won't ALWAYS keep it going either and seem to run out of wood to burn eventually. But their shelters work too, and they will likely have better clothing to trade for what ever you can afford. If you can trade for a fur, you can make the clothing you need if they don't have it already for trade, or you can become a robber and kill a few strangers in the forest for their fur coats and mittens sometimes too.

There is really a lot of options, and I don't think you should feel at all bound by any one choice of action. Have fun and go crazy. It's just a game.

[Ezhe]

According your situation, searching big games in wilderness for days probably won't work out for you. 'Cause you need to make a fire to keep yourself warm every time you cross several tiles far. Remember, always have some branches or twigs in your inventory, so you can make a fire as soon as you are about to freeze to death. When traveling, simple post spruce can help you against coldness during sleep. In order not to freeze to death, you can try STEALING. Yeah, you heard me right. All above is about telling you how to travel to a village under your situation. Then here is what you can do now.

You know, you can't blame a starving man for stealing bread. You may want to steal things from villages if you have no choice. It's often very dark during winter nights, where both you and the villagers can barely see 2-3 tiles far. This makes it a great opportunity for stealing. So, you can sneak into a village, steal furs or clothes from a cabin, and sneak out. Try the cabin closer to the village boundary to increase the chance of success. Just make sure there's no witness. And it's much easier if the village doesn't have dogs.

Of course, It's probably not a good idea to enter that village again with the stolen goods. Then you can wear stolen clothes or those made out of the stolen furs to keep warm. Actually, since you have a reindeer fur already, you can make clothes with that and use spruce twigs in bed instead. Besides, you have a cabin, food supply, and plenty of firewood. It's not bad a situation at all. But staying inside the cabin is not the solution. You need to be in action, otherwise the situation develops to a bad direction when you run out of your food and firewood and winter's getting even colder.

As long as you have warm clothes, winter will be easiest season. You will find out what I mean.

[g0815krieger]

The chopping trees problem:
Cut some branches first, make a fire and then chop the tree. Campfire nearby keeps you warm untill tree fallls.
Move the treetrunk to your shelter/house and do further processing inside, where it is warm.

Making clothes out of your single fur?
Well, I recomend mittens and fur footwear, anything else is less important imho.
The remaing fur is still big enough to keep you warm in your bed.

Foods:
In such an situation I would go for fishing at the shore of a lake or river.
Build a campfire befor you start fishing, and it should burn for at least 3 hours, to keep you warm during you fishing attempt.

Travelling in this situation:
Move from tree to tree, as soon it starts get freezing cold: light a fire next to a tree and cut branches for the next needed stop. As soon you feel warm again, you can move the next step. You can even move zoomed out, but be careful, you need to zoom in imediately when you start freezing, make a fire, near a tree and make enough branches for the next campfire.
Avoid areas where is very little trees.

[Trogdor]

Thanks for all the advice, guys. I took my reindeer hide and made some decent boots and gloves. It got a little warmer out, and I was able to cut down a few trees and gather tons of branches during the daytime, as well as check my trap-line where I caught an eagle-owl! I think the bigger fires are helping, too. 150 firewood has lasted almost 24 hours now