One Hour One Life Forums

fragilityh14

Member

Registered: 2018-03-21

Posts: 556

Gathering, the wilds, and surviving food collapse.

As someone else suggested, maybe the problem is too many people started playing when you usually spawned into advance societies.

What i do know, is I survive many societies where food collapses, because i'm out in the brush being productive, and everyone else seems to just stand around starving. (Not everyone, like 1/4-1/3rd of players are notably useful at food production)

Gathering in this game is crucially important. Unless there are immediate agriculture tasks such as watering etc, children should for the most part be making baskets and gathering food, seeds, and other useful materials.

It's pretty damn simple: your first run as a kid bring a basket with berries, find a mess of reeds or wheat, get sharp stone. Come back with original basket filled. Run to new basket, bring back with supplies, repeat. Baskets of foods from the outskirts do a great deal to relieve food pressure. When in village take note of if anything is needed, as supplies like carrot seeds, clay/adobe, and milkweed are crucial.

Unfortunately, it seems half the time I'm the one planting and watering and picking between runs, god knows what other people are doing.

Also, if it is clear the food is running out, scatter into the brush! If the farm is set up at all and carrots aren't entirely picked out it should be easy enough to run back with a basket of food and get farming going again.

I saw a farm with four people standing around starve out because no one bothered to water the planted carrots.

i lived, naturally, though yet another depressing game where I grew elderly alone because people stood around waiting to starve.

---

I'll tell you what I tell all my children: Make basket, always carry food.

Listen to your mom!

Kailes

Member

Registered: 2018-04-07

Posts: 4

Re: Gathering, the wilds, and surviving food collapse.

Absolutely. Actually when playing a hunter/trapper/scavenger it is relatively easy to survive in the wild, but when coming back to the village food stockpiles often ran low and you could have easily starved if you don't gather some food on the trip home.

I also find that people value clothes over backpacks which seems wrong to me. In developed villages you have carts, there it is fine, but in the beginning backpacks are definitely more important. The problem is, if you don't have one you need two trips with a basket worth of rabbits to prepare one. So better hide the first basket a bit away from the village. Or bring needle and thread to your hunting grounds.

nategate2020

Member

Registered: 2018-04-15

Posts: 6

Re: Gathering, the wilds, and surviving food collapse.

What i do know, is I survive many societies where food collapses, because i'm out in the brush being productive, and everyone else seems to just stand around starving. (Not everyone, like 1/4-1/3rd of players are notably useful at food production)

. . .

Also, if it is clear the food is running out, scatter into the brush! If the farm is set up at all and carrots aren't entirely picked out it should be easy enough to run back with a basket of food and get farming going again.

Agreed, I've always played in a manner where the town agriculture is supplementary to foraging. I'll never understand how people can just sit around the farm, eating it all up (except the elders who have done their time), and complaining when they perish instead of finding the good Gooseberry patches at the fringes of your town. Being away from town also usually helps with not getting murdered by the random psychopath once that eventually happens.

Lily

Member

Registered: 2018-03-29

Posts: 416

Re: Gathering, the wilds, and surviving food collapse.

Absolutely. Actually when playing a hunter/trapper/scavenger it is relatively easy to survive in the wild, but when coming back to the village food stockpiles often ran low and you could have easily starved if you don't gather some food on the trip home.

I also find that people value clothes over backpacks which seems wrong to me. In developed villages you have carts, there it is fine, but in the beginning backpacks are definitely more important. The problem is, if you don't have one you need two trips with a basket worth of rabbits to prepare one. So better hide the first basket a bit away from the village. Or bring needle and thread to your hunting grounds.

Backpacks definitely help a ton, though if food is an issue clothing is better, since you use less food. Personally I agree, it is probably better to have a backpack and run into the wilds and put some berries in it to make up for the extra food costs. That said you can make like five people pants with the same amount of rabbits.

Kailes

Member

Registered: 2018-04-07

Posts: 4

Re: Gathering, the wilds, and surviving food collapse.

Backpacks definitely help a ton, though if food is an issue clothing is better, since you use less food. Personally I agree, it is probably better to have a backpack and run into the wilds and put some berries in it to make up for the extra food costs. That said you can make like five people pants with the same amount of rabbits.

For those who stay in the village clothes are certainly more important than a backpack. However, I've seen many villages with no or only one backpack but fully clothed. And at that point furs spent on fur coats or shawls would be better spent on more backpacks. Another thing is, players with backpacks seem to be more willing to go scavenge and thus take pressure off the farm. A backpack also helps with gathering more milkweed and rabbits. Because the days where there was plenty of milkweed around are definitely gone. Most villages I've lived in did not even have a solid berry farm yet.

Another thing I noticed is the reluctance to invest in pies. With the changes to compost, pies did not seem reasonable because of soil consumption, but now you need straw for composting, while reed no longer works, so there is more reason to grow wheat, which makes pies a great byproduct.

In general, too many players' strategies seem to have some form of steady state society as a goal, but it does not look like Jason wants to enable such a playstyle. So scavenging, migration and scouting will likely become more and more important.

fragilityh14

Member

Registered: 2018-03-21

Posts: 556

Re: Gathering, the wilds, and surviving food collapse.

I really thin in general people downplay the possibility of sending males out with carts to come back with scarce items. For example, soil is ultimately limited, but it isn't terrible difficult to go farther and farther out to get it if you have a backpack and a cart with four baskets. I mean, you can empty a soil pit each time and then there are three worms for composting.

I hope in the future we'll see more trade depots, where city folk bring out pies and finished clothes etc for the people out in the brush getting more soil, seeds, clay, whatever.

---

I'll tell you what I tell all my children: Make basket, always carry food.

Listen to your mom!

pein

Member

Registered: 2018-03-31

Posts: 4,335

Re: Gathering, the wilds, and surviving food collapse.

two tips: dont water everything same time, makes picking harder and famines more frequent, if only 4 patches of carrots grow back, people tend to realize something gonna happen, and preserve food better, so keep 30 sec break between watering

getting 7 seeds saves a soil tile, so a cart and 2 in backpack worth 2 soils technically

never expect players to be smart, put seeds further and dont build wells

---

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7986 livestock pens 4.0
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4411 maxi guide

Playing OHOL optimally is like cosplaying a cactus: stand still and don't waste the water.

IronBear

Member

Registered: 2018-03-26

Posts: 91

Re: Gathering, the wilds, and surviving food collapse.

I have survived several collapses myself.  I typically grab a basket of food and head out the wilderness while the morons panic and starve.  I would like to say that a hunter/scavenger, but most times it happens to me while I am desperately trying to keep the farm going.  Of late most collapses happen because no one goes to collect wild seeds, but they still think the no need to have seed row rule is in effect.   So I spend my time seed guarding and keeping an eye on the last basket of carrots.  Just before a collapse everyone grabs all the last food.  It is very inefficient.  But when we are down to one basket of food I grab it and go searching for wild berry bushes.  When the bush runs down I go back and start picking the carrots that matured while everyone panicked and died.