Toggle Background Color
So here is what foot prints look like, by the way. Animal tracks look a bit different. Also, since I'm talking about how things "look", I should mention I'm using a graphical mod that spruces up the tileset a bit.
Anyways, the thread suggested traveling along the coast to the Easterner lands instead of my original plan of travelling up a river and then an overland journey. After considering it most of the afternoon I decided "why the heck not", so that is the plan! Leaving the Driik town behind I begin heading northwest towards the river, except instead of heading inland, I'll use it to travel down to the coast. After travelling nearly a kilometer another Driik settlement comes into view. Cool, I'll pop in there and see what they have on offer. However, before I can, I get an encounter with a wild animal. The game tells me I think its a squirrel and asks if I want to ignore it or zoom in. Feeling a bit bored I go ahead and say "sure, zoom in".
Which is a good thing! Because I totally forgot my objective was to encounter a wild animal, I don't think I would've gotten credit if I had ignored it. The game says my next task is to kill a wild animal. Sorry squirrel, I guess this isn't your day. I take a few steps forward and the squirrel bolts up a cluster of trees out of my reach. While it can move between adjacent trees, the squirrel can't seem to jump the gap, leaving it basically stranded, especially since it seems unwilling to climb back down where I can poke it with my spear. Well, I do have my long bow, but honestly I'd feel kinda silly shooting at a squirrel, plus knowing my luck I'd miss and my arrow would fly off to who knows where. So I do the next best thing, I walk over to a nearby rock, pick it up, and begin throwing it at the squirrel.
Yeah, this is going great! I now feel even more stupid. Thankfully stubborn persistence pays off and eventually I nail the stupid squirrel and it falls out of the tree, unconscious. Frustrated with it for wasting my time, I pull my club out and finish it off. With the squirrel dead the next tutorial objective is to skin the animal and produce a fur. Its too bad the Fox didn't count for this, but I'm lucky I ran into the squirrel. Anyways, butchering the stupid rodent nets me a fine squirrel skin, a single pound of edible squirrel meat, and some squirrel fat to tan the skin with.
With that finished I continue on my way to the Driik settlement. This one is just a small village and lacks stone walls surrounding it. Checking out the various buildings they don't have too much in the way of goods for trade though they do have a Masterwork Woodsman Axe and a few nice weapons, not that I can afford any of them. Basically the village has nothing to offer me, nothing except they have a Sauna! Eager to try it out I close the door and strip off all my clothing, grabbing the sauna scoop and a wooden tub of water. I "Apply" the sauna scoop and select the tub as my water source. Time to enjoy a nice steam filled bit of relaxation... OH wait, the Sauna fireplace isn't lit. Damnit!
Frustrated and unwilling to wait for the villagers to come light the fireplace, I leave the settlement in a huff and continue northwest. Eventually the river pulls into view and I walk up to the shoreline and drop my punt on the overworld map. Next I try to launch my boat by walking into the river but the game informs me I need a sesta or a paddle wielded to navigate my boat with. Right, totally forgot about that...
I obviously have neither of those, but that can be fixed real quick. Picking my punt back up, I zoom into the detailed map and walk back up to the shoreline. I drop my punt and some gear I don't need immediately and turn back to the tree line. Time to make a paddle. Conveniently, there is a fallen tree trunk nearby, so I can save myself the time of cutting a large tree down. I take my woodsman axe and use my timberwork skill to cut the trunk up into boards. This is one of the tasks a splitting axe is best at, but thankfully my good skill and perhaps the fact its a fine woodsman axe means I'm still able to manage a good result. After two hours of splitting I now have 3 fine boards, 8 normal boards, and 9 inferior (rough) boards sitting in front of me.
Each board weighs 20 lbs so I have no intention of taking these with me, most will be abandoned or used for firewood. In fact I drag a couple of the inferior boards away from the pile and burn them, using the fire to cook the squirrel cut really quick. While I wait for it to cook, I have some of my fox meat for lunch as the pike was finished off at breakfast. Once the roasted squirrel is done I head down to the water and complete the first couple steps of processing the squirrel hide, cleaning and tanning it. With that done it is now late afternoon and I'm starting to tire out. I figure I might as well make camp here for the day and spend the next hour or so building a shelter. Next up I grab one of the fine boards and, using my carpentry skill, begin making it into a paddle, a process which takes an hour and twenty minutes. After working further on the squirrel hide I chomp down some more fox roast for dinner and hit the sack nice and early. Tomorrow will be clear sailing paddling down the river.
I think I went to bed too early. Something wakes me up after midnight, as my character thought he saw something move in the distance. Probably just a bird flying overhead to be honest, but unfortunately I'm no longer tired enough to sleep. I guess I'm just getting a really early start, no big deal. In fact it doesn't really matter that it is midnight. Due to the fact that Finland (and, thus, the UnReal World) is so far north of the equator, "night" during the summer months isn't really what many of us would think of as night. To illustrate what I mean, here is a picture of midnight(ish) in the summer this far north.
This picture is from Norway, but the results in Finland are very similar. So it almost doesn't matter what hours I keep in the summertime. Getting my "day" underway, I go down to the shore and grab the squirrel skin. It is time to soften the fur and unfortunately I don't have any convenient surface to work on. I wander around the woods for a few minutes trying to find another fallen tree, no such luck. I decide that chopping down a tree just to work on this hide would be kind of a waste of a perfectly good tree, so I'll just keep an eye out for another fallen tree trunk as I travel today. With nothing left to do in the camp, I pick up all my crap and drop it into the punt. Wielding my new paddle, I shove off into the river. I actually don't get too far downstream before I spot another fallen tree, go figure. Going ashore I quickly finish up the squirrel skin and complete my current task. My next task is to learn how to trap. It simply wants me to create a trap, any kind of trap will do. I'll get around to it next time I set up camp.
For now I get back into my punt and continue down the river until I reach some rapids. Rapids are great! As far as I've been able to tell, they pose no additional danger to me while I'm in a boat (not sure about swimming) and they're a place where you can catch trout and salmon via fishing. These two fishes are amazing food sources, they weigh 8-9 pounds each and are extremely nutritious. A Roasted trout or salmon can feed you for 2-3 days depending. I decide this'd be a good time to try to catch some food for the next day or two, since, leaving aside my reserve foods, I've only got a couple cuts of fox and squirrel left. I maneuver the punt out into the middle of the rapids as deeper water is better for catching fish. After a brief panic attack where I think I lost my fishing rod, I pick it up from the bottom of the punt and start fishing. Six and a half hours later it is now morning and I've caught nothing. Ugh.
Munching on some fox roast I decide "fuck it" and continue down the river. Hours pass and by noon I've reached a spot where my river joins with another and I'm starting to get tired. Despite this I decide to press on for a little bit longer. The last of my fox meat is eaten and just as afternoon hits I see the river open up ahead out to open sea! Just in time too as my tired state has advanced "weary". I pull my boat along the shore and make camp. Chopping up the materials for a shelter and building it seems to sap the last of my strength and I become "Extremely tired" with a game message specifically warning me I need sleep soon. I oblige it and hit the sack.
Once again I wake up after midnight, and chomp down my roasted squirrel. It doesn't completely satisfy my appetite unfortunately. I know I still have my dried meats and rye bread, but I want to avoid eating those if possible. I decide today will be spent attempting to gather food. First though I want to satisfy that stupid trap objective. I grab a slim trunk leftover from building my shelter, a few nearby branches, a large stone, and move a map square away. Using my trapping skill I construct the simplest of all traps, a light lever trap.
This is an extremely primitive and simple trap. It consists of a few branches holding up a slim tree trunk above some bait. The prey comes to eat the bait and inadvertently bumps/triggers the branches, causing the tree trunk, weighed down with the heavy stone on top, to fall on it. Assuming the poor critter isn't killed by the blow, it will hopefully become trapped until the log, helpless until you come and deal with it. This trap, however, I have no intention to bait, as I have nothing useful TO bait it with. Instead I pop back out to the overworld map, which completes the task.
My next task it to simply check on the trap in a day or two, which is just fine as I'll be spending that time trying to obtain food. I head back to my campsite and row my punt out into the water. Once I get a good dozen tiles distance from shore I set up my nets in the water. Unlike fishing poles, spears, and clubs which are an active form of fishing, nets are passive. I simply set them out and then check on them in a day or two. If I take too long any fish they catch might die and become useless, so generally it is advisable to check your nets every 1.5-2 days. With the nets set, I ignore my grumbling tummy and paddle a little ways away and start fishing with my rod. Six hours later I've once again failed to catch anything and my hunger bar is nearly maxed out.
As the hunger bar approached full the rate it filled started slowing down significantly. In this state my nutrition rating will start to drop, representing the fact my body is using its energy reserves to sustain myself in place of a proper meal. As you can see in the screenshot above my nutrition its currently listed as "Temperate". Back when I left the walled Driik town it was listed as "Well-fed". The next few days I waited for my hunger bar to get mostly full before eating, in order to try to stretch out my limited supply of roasted meat. Because of this my nutrition dropped from that to "Nourished" to "Good", went back up to "Nourished" as I ate somewhere along the line, and then continued to fall from Good to Temperate. I'm nowhere near in danger of starving yet, but nutrition damage is not good. Every time you eat your nutrition rating is increased slightly, but you can only eat so often, as indicated by your hunger bar. To make matters worse, the lower your nutrition rating is, the faster your hunger bar fills! Basically your hunger bar being full lows your nutrition and the worse your nutrition rating is, the faster the hunger bar fills when its low, a potentially vicious cycle. I've yet to starve to death playing the game, and I have no intention of doing so now. Regretfully I munch down on some of my rye bread, figuring even tough rye will spoil faster than dried meats. I eat half of one of my loaves and not only does it empty my hunger bar, but it bumps my nutrition rating all the way back up to "Nourished", not bad.
With my hunger sated, I go back to fishing. I really need to catch something to make this camping stop a net profit caloriewise... The spirits are not favoring me however and another six ours pass without a catch. Its now late afternoon and I'm weary again. Feeling defeated, I paddle back to shore. Getting an idea I wander into the woods a bit and spot some nearby forage, two types of mushrooms, specifically. Using my herblore skill I examine both kinds.
One gets labeled as a "Fancy Mushroom" and the game tells me I have no fucking clue what it is. The other type of mushroom gets identified as Noaidi's Mushrooms. My herblore tells me that they're edible and "When consumed in any form it makes you fall into a trance and journey to the spirit world."
I- well, I, I mean... I AM hungry... plus maybe I could use some more attunement with the spirit world... I mean... Oh what the heck, DOWN THE HATCH! Oh wait, they're not ripe yet... two months? Damn. 
As for the other type of mushroom, I'm not about to eat an unknown mushroom, or else I might be sent on a permanent trip to the spirit world (besides, they're not ripe yet either). Disappointed, I walk back to my camp and go to sleep. Waking up I finish off that first loaf of rye bread and paddle my punt out to do more fishing. Again I fail to catch anything after several hours, so much for being rated as a "Competent" fisher. I wonder if fishing is poor along the coast... I could be in trouble if so. I was expecting fishing to support me as I traveled. Anyways, its been over 24 hours I'm pretty sure, so I pop into the overworld map and head over a map square to check my lever trap for the tutorial task. Unfortunately I guess the game feels I haven't given it enough time and the objective fails to complete. Fine, screw you too. Well, back to fishing. This time I pop my punt into the overworld map and travel back up into the mouth of the river, hoping the river might give me better results than the sea coast. This decision pays off slightly as after two fishing sessions I catch a bream and 4 meager roaches, which all add up to about 5 pounds of fish meat. Its not great, but it'll sustain me for now. I row back to my camp.
Surprisingly my trap must be close enough to my camp for the game to trigger the trap checking objective, as the task manager informs me this task is now complete. Hurray I guess. My next objective is to visit a settlement. I'm sure I'll get on that soon enough, I'll probably pass by an islander settlement at some point. For now though, I just want some more food. I build a fire and set my fish cooking. The roaches finish quickly and I wolf them down. All four roaches are just enough to empty my hunger bar out again. It was two thirds full, roaches just don't have much substance to them.
While waiting for the Bream to finish cooking, I decide to humor the game and actually go check my lever trap like it thought I did. Unsurprisingly it has not caught anything. Even baited traps take a while to catch things and with no bait a trap like this is relying basically entirely on dumb luck to catch something. However I do realize there are a bunch of bushes around the trap and check them out. They're crowberries and lingoberries, something my meager herblore is familiar with. More importantly, the crowberries are currently ripe and they're edible. I pick crowberries from the nearby bushes and munch a few down, two fistfuls barely make a dent in my hunger bar. Well, better than nothing I guess. Before I leave I get a small idea and toss one of the fistfuls of berries onto the trap, baiting it. I really doubt it'll catch anything, but you never know...
Walking back to camp I pick up my roasted bream and, since I'm tired, go to sleep once again. The time when I go to bed is actually noon. I've completely stopped caring about the exact hours I'm keeping. When I'm tired I sleep, when I wake, I work. It is just convenient doing things that way in the land of the midnight sun. I wake up in the late evening and figure that since its been almost two days, its time to check my nets. First I munch down several handfuls of berries for "Breakfast" and notice that not only are they emptying my hunger bar, but they're quenching my thirst as well. Juicy. Paddling out to my nets, I pull the first one out of the water. Nothing. I'm really starting to feel worried now as I pull the second net out of the water...
Wooo! 3 Burbots, a Bream, a Pike-Perch, and a Lavaret! I have no idea what a Burbot or a Lavaret is, but the bream is a medium fish and if a pike perch is anything like a Pike, I've got a nice bit of meat here! I excitedly mash the pickup key and check out my haul. What I forget to mash, however, is the screenshot key for InfranView. I swear I did, maybe I should use something other than ALT+~...
The third net is empty just like the first, but I am NOT going to argue with 18 pounds worth of fish meat. I fucking love fishing nets. Honestly if I knew the proper rituals I would be sacrificing to the Supernatural Guardians so hard right now. I excitedly paddle back to shore, build a fire and set all the fish roasting, celebrating by eating some of that bream I caught yesterday. With this much fish I think I can resume my journey for now. It'll take an hour for my fish to cook, so I decide to busy myself by chopping the nearby tree trunk into blocks. I might as well start the first step to making a useful item. Unfortunately the task takes longer than I thought and I'm soon barraged by messages telling me my fish are about to burn! I quickly cancel the task and run over and grab my precious fishies, thankfully they're just fine.
Feeling pleased with myself I decide to shove off and continue my journey. However I get a few tiles away from the shore when I think to myself "you know, I might as well check that stupid lever trap, after all I did bait it with some berries..." I paddle back to the shore and head down to the trap.
Whoa, it actually caught something! The supernatural guardians must be pleased with me for some reason! I quickly pull out my club and run over. Two whacks to the head later I'm butchering the ermine. Unfortunately the skin comes out as "harsh" meaning lousy quality, maybe I was a bit too liberal with the club, or maybe it was the trap. Regardless, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. I go back to my camp and roast the single cut of meat I got from the creature, wolfing it and some bream down once its finished.
Ok, now I resume my journey. Onwards to water-bourne adventure!
NOTE TO SELF: Pick more berries, bait more traps.