Help for a Newbie Spelunker?

[Sinister_Fang]

1 hour ago, KoreanWaffles said:

I put a Powercake into Toadstool's sporecloud.

Do I win?

Uhhhhhh.... I don't think that counts. Clever though.

[CaptainChaotica]

Yeah...I think I'll stick to my own current challenge.  At least it has some _structure_, something to specifically DO, rather than just "live this amount of time in-game".  Not to mention it doesn't take 100 real-life days.  : P

And all of this advice is awesome, guys!--and stuff I will totally try, once I get into the later stages and am "allowed" to make things like lanterns.  I mean, a lot of my problems with the caves right now is I'm not equipped properly and can't make filling food down there--with a crockpot and lantern alone I could go a lot farther.  (Although I still say I have a very weird, strangely empty cave set-up--at least, so far.  You'd think I would've seen SOME rock lobstsers or bunnymen by now...) 

This isn't quite the same as my "no science machine" challenge--not so much living on the most primitive level of the _game's_ technology, but living on (as close as you can  come to, anyway) the most primitive level of _real life_ technology.  This means you ARE allowed to make a science machine, so you can make a rope for your caveman spear.  That kinda thing.  I threw in endothermic fire and thermal stones because, well, they already don't make sense anyway, so just say they're magic and be done with it.  (Although, warming up a stone or potato or something and sticking it in your pocket to warm up is pretty simple/old fashioned.  The blue fire, though...notsomuch.)

So...right now I'm living through the rest of summer on the surface, in a very nice birch forest where I have berries, frogs, carrots, grass, twigs, wood, shade, and a pig village to fight hounds for me.  And a savannah FULL of rabbit holes right to the north. (When I make a permanent settlement, it might be in this area...it ain't bad.  Well, except for spring, but I already have a camp-ette near a bunch of frog ponds.)

But _later on_, when I get up to that part of the challenge, I will go back into the caves with better stuff and give it more of a proper try, I promise you guys.  Maybe I'll (gasp!) finally see the ruins!  Heh.

...Notorious

[minespatch]

On 1/19/2017 at 1:13 AM, HutGenerator said:

Some advice: you should bring some berrybushes (~20++) with you before going down cave.. late spring.. Usually I will start building cave base at late spring, so i can access both cave and overworld at the same time (easier resource management). When summer hits, you dont start building base down there, you go down like going to a hotel, the base should be finished before summer.

As someone who's just getting used to berryfarming, this will be very handy to me if I ever make a camp in the caves.

[Rellimarual]

It's my understanding that any plants brought from the surface to the caves and transplanted have a much higher and faster disease rate (compared to plants dug up and transplanted within their own server). Has that changed?

[WiggyWolf]

A lot of the advice we can give you is limited because of your crock pot challenge. If you allow yourself drying racks, that is what you should be making in the caves. Jerky from meat will fight off sanity problems in the caves. It will also provide you with healing and hunger. When I say meat for the drying racks, I mean you should use the non-morsel, non-monster meat kind. Use the full meat.

You can afford this because of the bunnies in the caves. It's going to be difficult to explain to you without showing you how to farm the bunnies if you have no experience doing that. Just watch the video:

If you don't want to use drying racks either for your challenge, you will find the bunnymen more than enough food just by cooking the meat and eating the carrots anyway.

Another option is using the blue and green mushrooms in the caves. You can eat the blue mushrooms raw to give yourself hunger and health at the cost of sanity. But you can then eat cooked green mushrooms for more hunger and to get back the sanity that you lost from the eating the blue ones. The mushrooms alone are enough. But I highly recommend you use the video and farm the bunnies.

[Rellimarual]

Actually, morsels and/or fish made into small jerky are also great. You get a lot of morsels from monkeys while in the ruins and small jerky dries in one day rather than two, so it's readier faster. Two small jerkies give the same amount of hunger as one large jerky, slightly less health, but more sanity (20 v. 15), and sanity is a bigger problem than health in the caves. If you are already fairly crazy, bunnymen turn into beardlords and drop monster meat instead of regular meat, but moles, rabbits, fish, etc. drop morsels no matter what and morsel sources are more widely distributed throughout the caves. If you camp near ponds, you can quickly turn two silk into enough fish or eels to make 9 small jerky. Ponds are available day or night and don't freeze in the winter.

[CaptainChaotica]

Cool.  I especially like the idea of year-round ponds.  So, let's see, to answer the latest stuff...

--I'm now into the second stage of my challenge and able to make drying racks, and I've done so at my surface camp.  Still really primitive, but now we're a settled culture*--not a civilization yet, but no longer purely wandering hunter-gatherers.  My new camp has a bunch of drying racks, a tent and a lean-to (because housing, to show it's settled!), some tooth traps, a Gobbler Shrine and a bunch of replanted berry bushes.  It's definitely looking nicer.  And I got rid of the one spider nest that had taken over my original/winter campsite, without it turning into a Queen.  Phew.  Took the entire fall to set up the new stuff/get the materials for it (by myself), so it was winter faster than I knew.  Now I'm staying at the winter camp BECAUSE it has nothing...and is really near all those spiders.  Mwa ha ha.  Come heeeeere, Deerclops...

Not that you really needed a status report, but, ya know. 

--My caves...maybe I just need to explore one of the other entrances and I'll suddenly find everything.  I swear to you--red mushroom trees as far as the eye can see, lots of grass and twigs..NO bunnymen, rock lobsters, moles or _anything_ as far as the eye can see.  (Which isn't very far.  'Cos it's a cave. But you know what I mean.)  Only 3 spider nests I've seen so far--that's it.  It is AMAZINGLY barren of animal life.  Kinda weird. 

The reason I was exploring this particular hole, by the way, is because it was close enough that I could run to it without overheating.  Now that that's not a problem...

And yeah, I agree on the small jerky. That stuff's AWESOME.  Now that I can finally make that, a _lot_ of my previous problems with health and sanity are going away just from that alone. Thank god.  I have a bunch of traps I put by the frogponds in spring, and move to the rabbit holes for other seasons.  And even without the crockpot, they're now doing me a lot more good.

(This isn't just a no-crockpot challenge, by the way.  To begin with, it was an almost "No EVERYTHING" challenge.  I could make:  Firepit, grass and log armour, spear, warm clothing that looks like plain fur, traps, bird traps, thermal stone, and endothermic fire.  That was it.  I've got some restrictions taken off now, though.  I'm gonna show it to everyone who might be interested at some point, but right now I'm playtesting it to find out:  "Is this even possible, or am I an idiot?"  I'm only a middling-skill-level player, so I figure if _I_ can do this...  : P)

...Notorious

*Well, I SAY "we", but so far I've been doing this all by myself.  The reason I'm doing it in DST, though, is that eventually it CAN be a community effort.

[fimmatek]

12 hours ago, Rellimarual said:

If you are already fairly crazy, bunnymen turn into beardlords and drop monster meat instead of regular meat, but moles, rabbits, fish, etc. drop morsels no matter what

Actually, rabbits turn into beardlings and drop monster meat / nightmare fuel / beard hair if your sanity is low.