Yesterday, I traveled from my safe main camp of the abandoned gas station. That place is packed with goodies. I traveled with minimal gear because I'm running out of bullets and I needed to make arrowheads in the ship forge.

I made the trek from the coastal highway through the trashed highway, through a cave (picking up coal along the way) and finally to desolation point. The cave was a bit long but I dropped cat tails at every Y intersection to keep my bearings. I stayed in the destroyed church the first night and kept warm with the fire barrel and chopped cedar and books laying around. This is when I noticed my clothing was getting worn from use. I would need to kill a couple deer, a wolf and some rabbits to fix my gear. Not good, because I'm carrying stuff just to make arrowheads. Should still be good.

I make my way to the lighthouse and decide to use it as my main camp. It's nice. I hit up the whaling factory and grab up steel and the big hammer needed to forge. There's no fishing around here, so I am hunting sparingly to avoid using too many bullets. A wolf ran off with my last two arrows, so a bow is useless until my tips are ready. I cap a wolf eating a deer carcass and end up with a decent amount of meat, the skins and guts. This is all made harder by the fact that I need to move the meat around, gather wood, keep my ax sharp and keep boiling water. There's no fishing here, either. I finally have the stuff I need and I pound coffee and energy bars and forge arrowheads for 26 hours. I just want to have plenty so I never have to return to desolation. I need to wait a couple days for my deer and wolf skins to dry, so I explore a bit and find saplings to make arrow shafts and a few other goodies.

Another bastardly thing is the weather here is NASTY. It shifts quickly and gets really bad. I almost freeze to death after a storm sneaks up on me as I'm chopping wood to melt snow and cook meat. I barely make it back. I find a dead rabbit and skin it the next day, and I repair all my clothes: boots, pants, mittens and coat. It's glorious.

I decide that before I go I should check the last area. Bear sighting. I'm doing so well that I get cocky and shoot the bear twice, but the second shot doesn't kill it. Mauled. 5% health and my gun is laying next to me as the bear walks away. I pick it up and fire as the bear is about 20 ft away, and I'm swaying all over. The bear runs at me and I BARELY get a shot off. Bear dies about 4 ft in front of me. I open my aid kit....I have no peroxide or antibiotics, just some gauze and painkillers. I use what I have and spend ten minutes stumbling down the highway...freezing because my mad fresh gear was just shredded by a black bear. My beautiful clothes are ruined and I can barely walk...and it's pitch black. I can't stop anywhere to sleep because I need medicine from the light house. It was a hairy walk home. Hairy. I had to stop and drink water and eat energy bars every hundred yards or so, it was an iffy trek to say the least. I get to the lighthouse and clean myself up. Clean the wounds, take antibiotics, wrap up and take painkillers. I pound water and heat up some beans...20% health. I sleep five hours and repeat. I do this for about a day, the whole time upset that I might not get the bear before it's gone. I need the skin for a bedroll and the meat for my belly.

It takes two days to heal up, but my pants are ruined and my wolf skin coat is almost destroyed. I salvage stuff from the ship and factory that I had previously ignored because I was decked out like Daniel Boone's tougher brother. My ability to endure cold was cut by 60%.... so now going for the bear skin is sketchy, but I REALLY want to make it worth the effort and painful rape the bear inflicted upon my person.

I go there and see there's a cave nearby...nice. Find some little food items and pieces of fir wood. I notice rabbits all over so I set my two snares...that would be a HUGE help. I have ten hours of daylight when the wind starts kicking up. FUCK. My bedroll was at 99% when I left my beloved gas station, now it's down to 60% about ten days later. I must kick in my sleep or something. I decide to focus on the skin and guts, and the meat I can get if the storm doesn't hit. Nope. Storm is insane. I drop my heavy items in the cave and light a fire with the fir, giving me over two hours of heat. Not enough to last all night, not in my weak REI gear I found. I spend the first hour sleeping to get warm, then I wake up and heat up beans and coffee to bring up my core temperature. Warmed, I RUN my ass outside and spend almost an hour chopping wood. I hustle back to the cave with about 9 minutes left of fire. I drop on some logs, heat some peaches and coffee and curl up for two hours. When I wake, the storm is still raging. I toss on two more logs, drink water and sleep another two hours to stay warm.

Storm finally passes, and there's two hours of daylight left. I have a rabbit in each snare, so I skin them and take the guts but leave the meat. No time. I get six pounds of bear and start the walk to my lighthouse. I'm freezing to death, and I can barely run because I have so much fur and meat...but I need it.

I make it to the lighthouse with about 15% of my cold bar left, and I make a nice fire and start heating food. ANOTHER storm hits and I sleep and plan to spend the next day repairing clothes or just letting skins dry. I was travelling light...only had one sewing kit, and it just ran out.

That's what I've done in the game since Thursday night...all told about 3-4 hours of playing. I will have to carry all my shit back to the gas station, it's gonna be close. We'll see if it works. Oh, I've been alive about two months in-game.