Ocean Survival in DST: A Fisherman's Unnecessarily Detailed Guide to Staying Alive at Sea

[Rinkusan]

2 hours ago, QuartzBeam said:

Because Thermal Stones require no fuel whatsoever and the nights are so short during summer that you'd be wasting tons of logs to get light that you'll only use for about 1.5-2 minutes out of 8.

Right, which is why you don't not use the thermal stone. You can keep the thermal stone in your inventory at all times and pop a log in the endo fire pit which keeps the thermal stone cold for longer compared to playing hot potato with the thermal stones in the ice box (which you can STILL do during the day in summer before lighting up the endo fire pit as dusk hits). The ice bream keeps you cold longer than either of these options, but you run the risk of killing the fish if you forget to switch ice breams, AND you have to juggle with 4 ice breams because of the slow 33% refresh rate of the fishing bin.

[Rinkusan]

Just thought I'd let everyone know that the guide has been updated with a couple of things, the biggest one including the realization that meaty stew can be made out at sea.

This recipe is an absolute game-changer when it comes to being efficient with your food supply; to put its efficiency into perspective, turning 4 small fish into meatballs gives you 12.5 bonus hunger, which means 3.125 extra hunger per fish (a 25% increase in hunger per fish). It's small but certainly better than doing nothing while sailing in search of . But if you turn 2 big fish and 2 small fish into meaty stew, you get 75 bonus hunger, which means DOUBLE the hunger (a whopping 100% increase in hunger per fish). Normally, you wouldn't be able to make meaty stew because of the excessive fish value. Thanks to drying racks, however, you can make stews out of fish by converting them into jerky, and just to make it that much better, it only takes 1 day instead of 2 to dry large fish meat. 

I also re-organized the recipe list in order of which recipes you should prioritize. If anyone wants to understand my reasoning for how I ranked these recipes, my line of thinking basically went like this:
- #1: Kelp is filler, plain and simple. It's also 1 of the 2 spoilable ingredients covered in this guide and is the quickest of the 2 to spoil, so it would be beneficial to use these as soon as possible.
- #2 and 3: Meaty stew gives you the most bang for your buck, and there are 4 viable stew recipes you can use depending on your situation. If you have monster meat, you should use it on this dish since it's a spoilable ingredient but gives a whole meat value without the fish value just like jerky. The best recipe uses 1 jerky and 2 fish morsels to squeeze as much hunger out as possible, but if you happen to be in a situation where you have more big fish than small fish in your fishing bins, you can instead use 1 jerky, 1 fish meat, and 1 egg (i.e. 2 big fish and 1 small fish) to maximize the amount of meaty stew you can make.
- #4 and 5: Same logic as 2 and 3, but with the condition that you don't have any monster meat to work with.
- If you find yourself in a situation where you have no big fish left, it's completely impossible to make meaty stew, so you have to rely on the following recipes.
- #6: If you have monster meat left and only small fish in the bins (i.e. you can't use monster meat for stews), the next best dish to use that monster meat on for hunger is bacon and eggs.
- #7: If small fish and corn cods are the only thing you have in the fishing bin at this point, eat the corn from the corn cods raw because you still want to conserve those small fish for meaty stews when you eventually find a school of deep bass and mudfish. 
- #8 and 9: If small fish is the only food in storage, meatballs are your only option. If your entire fishing bin is filled with small fish, you can dump 4 into the crockpot for 12.5 bonus hunger. Because ice is unspoilable just like fish but occupies less space, it's generally a good idea to only use ice as a last resort when food storage is dangerously low.
- #10 and 11: Surf n turf is just for sanity, which you don't need out at sea unless you're about to sail to shore.

P.S. Thanks to those who came to the boat-building competition!