Brutality Check (Hard Spoilers)

[Nelgoth]

Hey guys,

Hope everyone is doing well! I have been playing the new BTW all weekend but I never made it past basic campfire in around 10-15 runs. I believe it may have just been a lot of bad luck, but the experience was extremely brutal. I am probably missing something vital in the process but wanted to share my experience for science. The first few deaths were just from messing around trying to get the hang of the new mechanics (which I absolutely love!!!!) It took me a long time to figure out the cooking spit, I finally had to look it up after a few shortish runs (mainly was just too scared to click on the fire with my pointy stick thinking it would burn).

Once I got past the spit issue, I then started making it into the 5+ day survival but I keep getting stuck in a campfire resource sink. I think the crux of the problem is that I have been extremely unlucky on my spider spawns, in 10 runs I only saw 5-6 spiders and of the 5 that I killed, only one dropped string (#6 I ended up being the killee). I just end up getting stuck in a hopeless cycle of trying to feed my campfire to cook enough food to not quite have the energy to feed the campfire. The run that I killed a spider and made an ax, I lasted quite some time but got killed trying to figure out the brick oven. I wanted to check if there was another way to advance, or if finding a string bearing spider is a technology requirement.

Thanks for any pointers you guys feel like giving and THANK YOU to FC for the best survival game of all time.

[ElectroBot]

String is extremely crucial early game, but you might want to look around for cobweb and try to use something sharp on it.

Some biomes are not survivable early game (desert, jungle), others are harder (plains with no trees, swamp at night), etc.

You might want to search for clay (looks and spawns a bit different in 4-AHHHHHHhhhhhh) to progress further (no string needed for this step).

[Nelgoth]

OMG, ElectroBot, you are such a wonderful person. This reply was perfect. Thank you, now off to prepare to call into work "sick" tomorrow.

[dawnraider]

Explicit spoilers regarding string and spiders:

Spoiler

Show

If a spider has shot a cobweb it will not drop string, but you can harvest string from webs.

What troubles are you having trying to figure out the ovens?

[Zhil]

You're doing super if you're already able to sustain campfire-living in any case. It's just about figuring out the next hump. And the next. And the next.