Surviving as a Tribal on an Ice Sheet without Cannibal Trait

[ArtCollector]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to survive as a Tribal with only a sword and some tribal wear on an ice sheet.
The problem is that I keep running out of food. I usually start at a location with caves so I can get the insect jelly, but the problem is the hive dies around -28 degrees.

To counteract this, I lured all the insect away from the hive with insect jelly, and trap them inside a small prison by building a wall behind them while they eat. When they are all gone, I quickly build walls around the hive with some doors included. I then release two insects and have them tend to the hive. As the hive creates its own heat, it will be protected to temperatures up to -60 degrees.

I've only happend to pull this off once, so I was hoping someone might improve on this.

- One of the biggest problems is you need to kill the insects still trapped as the others won't do maintenance as I think the once who are trapped try to do maintenance.

- The room size should be about 9 tiles as you can still walk past the two insects to get the jelly

- You can create the insect jelly bait by having your pawn eat insect jelly with a full hunger bar, so it takes only one, then draft and forbid the insect jelly.

[5thHorseman]

Insect farming. I love it.

I have no advice. I'm just here to marvel.

[dragonalumni]

caveman living off stolen insect goo in space siberia.

dam.

[DuckBoy]

Build as many sight blockers as you can. 
I think insects still sleep in 1.0, so if you're quick enough you can steal the food at midnight. 
If you can get up to molotov cocktails, you can use them to stay warm forever.   

God speed fellow tribal. 

[ashaffee]

As a tribal village I wouldn't attempt it without cannibal personally. The game gives things to help early game like insects but you have to have hydroponics really really fast. Another option is to consider your wealth = food with traders but again then orbital trade beacons becomes a rushed tech.

So on tribal I think your best bet is make sure to leave with a dedicated artist. Have them none stop cracking out things to sell for food. Make sure you have 1 friendly neighbor that sells food. Park on the border between tundra and ice sheet and go on hunting raids also helps.

But to me cannibal is designed for tribals and peaceful for crash landed.

[Foxfire]

Create a caravan to go for a walk outside your colony. Wait to get attacked or force an encounter. Defend yourself. Win. Then murder everything with four legs currently on the screen. Take your meat horde back to your colony. Real tribes don't hunt in camp. They have excursions, sometimes days at a time, to hunt for food. If you choose to camp on a barren icescape, I think it just magnifies the need to travel further to hunt for food.

[TheMeInTeam]

Create a caravan to go for a walk outside your colony. Wait to get attacked or force an encounter. Defend yourself. Win. Then murder everything with four legs currently on the screen. Take your meat horde back to your colony. Real tribes don't hunt in camp. They have excursions, sometimes days at a time, to hunt for food. If you choose to camp on a barren icescape, I think it just magnifies the need to travel further to hunt for food.

Is encounter rate actually high enough where this can be done?  You have to feed both the hunting party and the colony, and I'm not convinced encounter proc rate is fast enough to allow it.

If you settle near an enemy base in earlier versions you could repeatedly raid it to generate new animals, but in 1.0 it seems attacking a base has a several day cooldown before you can do it again, so this is not a fast enough source of food any longer.

@ OP: you can draft and pick up items if you set a pawn as part of a caravan.  If insects are still sleeping you might be able to use this for some pretty hefty jelly runs if you can avoid aggro.  Just wall it in w/ door sufficiently that it doesn't freeze.

[ArtCollector]

Thanks for your replies!

Getting the insect jelly is quite easy, as they indeed sleep at night. The main problems are it takes some time to set the traps, but I'll try your trick TheMeInTeam to see if that speeds up the progress. If you take too much time to enclose the nest, the temperature goes below -28 degrees and kills the nest.

I do like the idea of travelling for encounters, but I highly doubt I can win without weapons, or survive the infection that follows.

The other problem was killing the ones in the traps, as the try to do maintenance on the nest but have no path. This means the nest dies because of lack of maintenance.

I saw a raider once attacking one of the traps, and killed him because I wasn't done yet. It might be possible to have the raider attack the cage and then get attacked by the insect.

I included some pictures of the setup



[attachment deleted due to age]

[Foxfire]

Create a caravan to go for a walk outside your colony. Wait to get attacked or force an encounter. Defend yourself. Win. Then murder everything with four legs currently on the screen. Take your meat horde back to your colony. Real tribes don't hunt in camp. They have excursions, sometimes days at a time, to hunt for food. If you choose to camp on a barren icescape, I think it just magnifies the need to travel further to hunt for food.

Is encounter rate actually high enough where this can be done?  You have to feed both the hunting party and the colony, and I'm not convinced encounter proc rate is fast enough to allow it.

If you settle near an enemy base in earlier versions you could repeatedly raid it to generate new animals, but in 1.0 it seems attacking a base has a several day cooldown before you can do it again, so this is not a fast enough source of food any longer.

@ OP: you can draft and pick up items if you set a pawn as part of a caravan.  If insects are still sleeping you might be able to use this for some pretty hefty jelly runs if you can avoid aggro.  Just wall it in w/ door sufficiently that it doesn't freeze.

Without any science behind it, I believe you can increase the encounter rate proportionally to the amount of valuables you carry and low threat of your caravan (less people, weapons, etc). My heavily loaded caravans always get attacked in three days. Sometimes back to back. Using that theory I can usually get an encounter between three to five days. People smarter than me can either prove or disprove this.