Early-game clothing source?

[DanielCoffey]

I am wondering how you would recommend sourcing clothing in an early (Year One) game?

The reason I ask is that I had  a "You know Cassandra hates you when..." moment. She slammed me with a Blight two days before my corn was due for harvest then hit me immediately after with a Heatwave. I now have four colonists in unsuitable clothing (mostly Tribalwear), tattered apparel, 52C outside in the red end of the temperature scale, no Cotton and all the small game have moved away due to the heat. I have one or two Dead Man items but they are Tuques and similar so unsuitable for the heat.

We are now late summer and everyone is living in the coolest room next to the freezer nibbling the last of the food while we wait for the Heatwave to break. Can we recover from the lack of stored food and clothing before the winter? What should I do next time to mitigate this issue if it happens again?

[eadras]

Clothing can be a real challenge early in the game.  Especially because new colonists almost always seem to show up "unhappily nude", regardless of the outside temperature.  I try to tame some alpacas as soon as possible if I'm in a biome with harsh winters.  They produce a lot of wool, and it's warm enough that just a tuque and jacket can keep your colonists warm.  Cloth is innately unreliable due to the blight event, as you found out.  Leather Tribalwear is surprisingly effective, though.

[Pushover]

Assuming this has to do with heat waves with tribals: I find building a passive cooler in a small (4x4 or so) room is the only solution early. Micromanage the heatstroke, when they go to the room to cool down, draft them until the heatstroke is fully gone.

[DanielCoffey]

Thank you both for the help. I had not appreciated that I could still send folks outside without appropriate clothing when it was 50C+ as they had a -15 debuff from extreme heat. At least I can make dashes out for berries before they all dry up.

Will they "self-admit" to a cool room or do I have to manually manage their heat impairment and get them in there by order? I do have a freezer which I am currently allowing to vent to the central room by holding the door open. I figured a quick dash outside for fuel for the genny was a small price to pay for cooler nights!

I know there are mods around for situations like this (Closeable Vents for example) but I feel these guys will be screwed over the winter unless I can get lucky with a Trader or can start hunting again when the heat breaks.

[milon]

They should automatically seek a safe temperature eventually. At least, they do for getting out of cold weather (I play a lot in the cold biomes).

[b0rsuk]

Cloth/wool can be hard to get early. Dusters require quite a lot of work and you don't have the manpower in year 1 probably. You can get lots of leather from hunting but you won't make a cowboy hat with that.

So it's freezers, passive coolers and maybe you can trade / send caravan to get some wool. As for having your food supply destroyed by heat wave, if it's year 1 you should be able to make do with berries/agave and hunting. Try to plant rice, especially on rich soil so you can harvest it before winter. If you have a fussy person who is often idle because he won't haul/construct/grow, maybe send him in a caravan to trade for food ?

[Limdood]

They'll go to the cool (or hot, for hypothermia) room on their own, but they won't go until heatstroke (or hypothermia) is "serious" - if this happens when they're far away, they won't make it back in time.

Tamed alpacas to make each colonist a duster and either a tuque or cowboy hat will solve any but the most extreme temperature issues in the game.  requires some time for growing alpaca wool and complex clothing research if you're a tribe, but the alpaca hats are a HUGE temp difference and take minimal work.

[DeathWeasel]

As soon as the heat wave is over animals will move back on to the map. Leather is an excellent early game clothing source as it provides more protection from bullets than cotton does and will protect against winter cold and summer heat in all but the most extreme cases.

[LordMunchkin]

Wool, cotton, and hide. Cotton is nice because it requires less labor and can be used for crafting medicine. Hide is OK if you have a really active hunter and lots of easy animals to kill (I'm usually wary about killing herds of animals because of the stupid revenge event). Wool is really good to have but takes longer. Still, it costs almost no labor compared to the other two  because you just set the animals to graze and have someone shear them every 15-30 days. 4-5 muffalo/alpaca are pretty nice to have for a small colony and definitely worth purchasing from traders or trying to tame.

If you're willing to use mods, I really recommend the FashionRimsta mod by Spoon. It adds some temperature clothing for tribals (desert robes and fur coats).

[Pushover]

Will they "self-admit" to a cool room or do I have to manually manage their heat impairment and get them in there by order? I do have a freezer which I am currently allowing to vent to the central room by holding the door open. I figured a quick dash outside for fuel for the genny was a small price to pay for cooler nights!

I know there are mods around for situations like this (Closeable Vents for example) but I feel these guys will be screwed over the winter unless I can get lucky with a Trader or can start hunting again when the heat breaks.

Pawns will seek a safe temperature as soon as they check for a job and are suffering from serious heatstroke or hypothermia. Hypothermia you want to manage, since serious hypothermia means frostbite, which is bad. They will head indoors and wait until they no longer have the serious condition and check for a job. The micromanagement comes because they will head out with minor heatstroke, reach their job with serious heatstroke, then walk back after not doing any work.

Nothing is preventing you from hunting in the winter, or growing if you have an area with sufficient cooling. Winter is easier than summer on warm maps.

[Catastrophy]

Leather is probably easiest to get early. The key is having enough of one type so you can actually use it. Cotton grows quite fast, too, but I'd try my luck with leather first.

[Grax]

Leather is probably easiest to get early. The key is having enough of one type so you can actually use it. Cotton grows quite fast, too, but I'd try my luck with leather first.

Don't forget that leather amount depends on manipulation and conscience, so cook with adv.bionic hands/eyes will do 300-500% more units of meat and leather.

[makapse]

Leather is probably easiest to get early. The key is having enough of one type so you can actually use it. Cotton grows quite fast, too, but I'd try my luck with leather first.

Don't forget that leather amount depends on manipulation and conscience, so cook with adv.bionic hands/eyes will do 300-500% more units of meat and leather.

Good luck actually insetting them without glitterworld med.
Early game,you want to hunt medium game anyways for making fine meals for some mood anyways so its not that bad to use the leather to make some emergency clothes. Manhunter packs are great because all those animals are the the same so the leather can make dusters too which would otherwise need you to carefully select the targets.

[Lawlzer]

Leather is probably easiest to get early. The key is having enough of one type so you can actually use it. Cotton grows quite fast, too, but I'd try my luck with leather first.

Don't forget that leather amount depends on manipulation and conscience, so cook with adv.bionic hands/eyes will do 300-500% more units of meat and leather.

Good luck actually insetting them without glitterworld med.
Early game,you want to hunt medium game anyways for making fine meals for some mood anyways so its not that bad to use the leather to make some emergency clothes. Manhunter packs are great because all those animals are the the same so the leather can make dusters too which would otherwise need you to carefully select the targets.

Remember, he said first year... First year bionics, pre-winter? Please, lol.

I'd reccomend building all of your rooms close, and having hallways in between each room, so that if you get a heatwave / cold snap during winter, you can add 1-3 heaters or coolers, and they'll heat/cool down the entire base. Or you can use a geothermal vent for heat; Good luck!

[DanielCoffey]

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

I am just coming to the end of Autumn and the temperature is starting to drop (range -5C to +25C). Crops are slowing and colonists are starting to moan about sleeping in the cold. I did manage to get a couple of cotton harvests in and have been grabbing everything small and squeaky that has wandered past (plus the odd larger animal that got bitten or burned and succumbed to wounds).

One raider turned out to be 14 crafting and 10 research so he was carefully wooed and now we have him making nice clothes when we ask and studying when free. Raiders are coming in small groups now and we have weathered two heatwaves. The freezer is full, plenty of steel is stored and the only issue is, of course, mood. My starting sole colonist is very joy deprived so I will have to make sure she gets time to relax. I suspect looking after and treating prisoners is making her miss scheduled Joy breaks.