Part 2: Days 3-4: Maroons With Spoons

Welcome back to LOST, both Keith and Skye are still starving to death and picking up random fruits isn't cutting it, we need to deal with our food problem.

Music: Cave #2


Morning.



Ok, but are you ok without eating first?
That's true. First, I'll go out and look for things we can eat.
I have a knife I found on the lifeboat. With this and a fire, I think I can do some simple cooking.
If you find any food that can't be eaten without being prepared, come talk to me and I can cook them, ok?
Ok.

In spite of being so totally blind that she cannot move without being dragged everywhere by the hand, Skye inexplicably still possesses the ability to cook because she's a woman. Mechanically, Skye won't be much more than a castaway housewife for the entire duration of the game and no Keith cannot elect to take on cooking responsibilities if you want to. Game's got kind of an iffy outlook on gender politics if you haven't noticed.

Stand in front of her and push the A button to talk.

Music: Cave


Choices! This menu encompasses all of the surprisingly few ways we can interact with our companion. Let's be civil and pleasant in the hopes of extracting more character out of these two.

How are you doing?
There's nothing really new.

Well that was a bust. Regardless, it's important to ask how Skye's doing every day because it can trigger certain conversations that unlock stuff to build or just improve Skye's opinion of you. Both good things.

Let's eat now.
Hehe, I was getting hungry too. Let's eat something.



Here we hand our food to Skye for cooking, Skye can also hold 20 items but any food handed to her is immediately cooked then shared so it hardly matters any, Skye has no concept of food conservation so you need to give her exactly as much food as you need to satisfy yourself and no more lest you overeat and waste food. At the moment though, we only have fruits and cold rocks so I just dump the lot on her.

I can only make really simple things, but...



Skye then walks off to the corner of the cave and pulls a frying pan out of her ass and starts carelessly tossing assorted coloured pixels into the air paying no heed to the stark absence of a fire. I forgot to light it but despite her saying she can cook provided a fire, it turns out you do not actually need a fire to have her cook food.



Sorry...it doesn't look too good.

Skye presently lacks culinary proficiency, this improves given time, better relationship values and locating better cooking equipment but at the start she's a very poor cook. Another contributing factor to Lost In Blue's already incredibly rough start.



Food is automatically shared amongst the two when cooked, and the right foods cooked in the right combinations will produce actual recipes with their own unique names with greater bonuses rather than random crap which just results in the "Strange Salad" you see before you.

So-so




Mixed Fruit Salad

So-so




Raw Sand Crab

So-so



Food is distributed into "meals" where there's four food items maximum to a meal. The "strange salad" is where all the clams and assorted rubbish went, while the fruit salad must be where the coconuts went since it maintained the water bonus.

A total of 19% hunger restored is woeful right now, we evidently won't get by on picking random crap of the ground and cooking it. Before we can make any headway into exploring the island we need to secure a better source of food.



COME NOW WE MUST MAKE HASTE!

Music: Beach


Maybe I can find things in the ground by digging.

Push A button anywhere to search the ground.

This is distinct from tapping the stylus to maybe find critters in the ground in that at the moment, you can randomly find spices that Skye can use in her dishes provided you know the recipes to give them an extra kick.

Don't let go of my hand, OK?
Ok, but if you want to walk alone, you can let go and I'll stay where I am and wait.
Only...
Don't worry, I will come back for you.
Thank you.

Press Y button to let go of her hand. You can rest and drink water together while holding hands.



Yep, that's definitely drinking together. It bears mentioning that no matter how many times you bring Skye to the river to drink in spite of it being three steps out the front door, Skye will never ever be able to find it herself and quench her thirst. You must drag her there by the hand and instruct her to drink every single fucking time.

After this, I drop Skye off back at the cave and commence exploration of the other side of the river that I was denied by Skye's appeareance last time.



Near Skye's lifeboat, I locate a stone. Not useful presently, but this is one of the closer to home Stone spawn locations and they will be useful for tools eventually.



On the far right side of the beach, I locate some potatoes which is about the only new food discovery to be had here. But potatoes are a nice, filling food so hopefully they'll provide some better nourishment.

My hunger is at this point around 4%, so I immediately rush back to the cave and throw a bag full of coconuts and potatoes at Skye and tell her to get cracking.



Short neck Mystery Bake

So-so



okay so potatoes totally suck as well, good to know. Not pictured: Like five Fruit Salad bakes from all the coconuts to bring the pair of us up to a much better but still totally paltry for a full inventory 35% hunger. The search for good food continues.



Back across the river, I discover mushrooms of varying colours sitting around.



Tempting fate, I immediately shove the black one down my gob with nary a thought as to the consequences.



Then heading onwards to the corner of the beach, I find a little ledge with an appealing item on it. Also, at this point an hour has passed and bugger-all happened with the mushroom so I guess shoving random fungi down your throat goes totally unpunished in this otherwise harsh survival simulator.



Now we're talking, bamboo makes an excellent material for crafting, but there's nothing we can craft it into at the current moment.



At this point, I tempt fate once more by eating a mushroom of a different colour I picked up at some point during the sweep of the beach.



It must be that mushroom I ate.

Booyah! Precisely what I was looking for. Okay, time to stop playing coy about the mushrooms. Each colour of mushroom has a different effect, but the caveat is that which colour carries what effect is determined totally randomly at the start of the playthrough. Almost all of the effects bar exactly this one are negative, inferring status ailments like poison which will slowly deplete your overall health, or dry throat which makes your Thirst drop rapidly. The black mushroom doing absolutely nothing threw me a little because I didn't know the game could decide a mushroom to have no effect.

The effect of this mushroom is that for a short length of time, my stamina cannot decrease at all. Considering 1% of stamina is consumed every single time you perform an action like climbing a ledge or jumping a short gap, working out which mushroom carries this effect as early as you possibly can is absolutely essential to making good headway into your explorations. It's awesome and I'm now stockpiling these fabulous fungi for the rest of the game.



On the north side across the river with the sun starting to go down, I climb a few ledges and find some carrots. Unremarkable in every way but it's a new food so I felt like pointing it out. Also logs.



It's too heavy for me to carry but it seems possible for me to push it and make it roll.

Stand next to the log and push Y button to make it roll.

Logs act like ledges, Keith can climb up ledges that are up to two "blocks" tall, while Skye can only climb up to one block tall. The presence of these logs makes it abundantly clear we'll need to make a path for Skye through here eventually.



It is now super late, but back at the far right corner of the beach, we discover the tide has pulled out and we can safely run around the wall to the other side.



Immediately I start scaling the other side of the wall separating the normal beach and this slightly hidden area. The tide incidentally, lowers at Idontknowwheno'clock and rises back at 9pm, it is presently 8:05pm in this screenshot so I am really pressed for time. If the tide rises while I'm still on this side, I'm stuck until it lowers again in which time I will surely starve to death.



Climbing up a few more ledges reveals bamboo jackpot. There's around six pieces of bamboo here, a great haul since the material is otherwise fairly scarce. We'll soon put it to good use but for now I grab as much as I can carry and get the fuck out of there before I perform the impressive feat of stranding myself on an even smaller island than the one I am presently already stranded on.

The time of exit was 8:50pm, so I got out with precious few seconds to spare since in game time passes at a rate of roughly five minutes every five seconds. At this point, the day is pretty much over so I head back to the cave.

Music: Cave


I've done enough searching for today.
Oh...ok...

Oops. Guess that wasn't the answer she was looking for.

Music: Progress


What's that, is that a bamboo stick? I thought of something, is it ok if I use that?

No it's not ok you vulture, I need this for manly things lik-

Yes, go ahead.

fuck you keith



Skye then proceeds to vigorously massage the floor before walking back to us.

Look! I made a basket. If you find more bamboo, I can make more baskets. If you want more baskets, you can ask me anytime.

Basket has been added to Job Request.

One of Skye's other abilities is that there are certain items only she can craft given the appropriate material. Takes time for her to make them though, so give her the word in advance if you like having your stuff on time.



More bamboo sticks you put here, I can make more baskets. I'll put the baskets I'm done making here, so take them whenever you need them.

Push A button in front of basket and bamboo stock area to check

You know, this never bothered me until I started having to transcribe the dialogue for this LP but holy shit is the translation awkward as hell.

Can you think of any good use for it?
Hmm...Oh! Maybe I can make traps to capture animals with this!
Traps to capture animals?
Yeah, I'll set up traps so that I can capture small animals that are too quick for me to catch.
I see, I wonder what kind of animals you can capture?

Trap has been added to tool-making.

Traps are not useful at the moment since we've seen nothing to capture and I don't like doing it anyway, much like everything else in this game it requires more patience than I have to spare. It also bugs me greatly how this is forced on you after you get your first bamboo, this cutscene is the reason I picked up more than one of them, I have plans for those bamboo sticks and I will not allow some basket-weaver to get in the way of those plans.

After having this brief moment of small progress, I go to sleep and end the day.

Music: Today's Results


Both still starving to death! At this rate, the simple fact that objects respawn on a three day cycle is going to eventually kill us if we don't locate a more stable source of food.

Pepper Seed is one of the random spices I found digging up the ground, they don't actually occupy regular inventory space but are nontheless counted as items in the results screen.

Music: Cave #2


What's wrong?
We can't get enough food by just going around picking food off the ground...

Thanks for noticing the thing I've been pointing out since the start of the update.

There's an ocean and river right here. If we could catch some fish somehow...
I know, I should make some kind of weapon.
A weapon?
Yeah, like a spear. If I had a stick, I should be able to make one.

Now you're talking my language. I don't have a stick, but I do have something green and stick-esque! Let's get cracking.




Pick stone, press X, you now have sharp stone. Stones have little use outside of being sharpened so the extra step is just pointless busywork.



Taking our newly sharpened rock and some bamboo we craft ourselves a high quality spear for eventual animal murdering, now we're finally going to start getting somewhere with the food situation.



You can also just sharpen a piece of bamboo on its own to make a lower quality spear, so I do this to the rest of my bamboo stock. Bit less sturdy than the ones with stones but I don't have many stones to go around and I don't ever want to stop stabbing things.



Spear in hand and belly empty, it's time to stab some aquatic wildlife for fun and survival!



See fish, poke fish with stylus, stab fish with spear. Intuitive and simple, precisely what touchscreen controls should be. Sadly, rudimentary experimenting with savestates reveals that where the spear actually ends up is only loosely related to where you poked on the screen. It feels natural, but it's provably imprecise.



We also get a jarring and creepy photo-realistic image of whatever animal life we just snuffed out to sustain ourselves. Try not to let their cold, dead eyes unnerve you while you hunt.

The kinds of fish you can get are determined by place, time and the odd random weather condition.



From that river, I only found two kinds of fish, but I stabbed a bunch of them and am now totally ready to finally eat well for once.



Crucian Strange Salad

So-so



Sweet. We're getting somewhere.



Black Bass Strange Salad

So-So



Holy shit! For the first time in four days since the game's start, we are actually well-fed and in a good position!

Fish are great and fulfill lots of hunger and are relatively easy to get, I rely on them pretty much exclusively to sustain me for most of the game. Black Bass in particular are incredibly filling and easily found in the river just outside the cave, we're finally getting over the initial game hump here people!

Music: Beach


Now that Keith and Skye are well-fed, I shove an Energy Mushroom down both of their throats and head back across the river to start scaling the northern walls.



Moving a log one space consumes 1% Stamina like any other action, so without the infinite energy property of the mushroom, I'd be exhausting myself fast.

Pushing this log to the wall makes me able to drag Skye up it, so we can make progress in our exploration.



The energy mushroom lasts for a fair bit of time but not long enough for the entire trek. Probably should've packed a couple more because I'm going to end up cutting it pretty fine.



Further north Keith and Skye choose an inappropriately precarious location to re-enact The Creation Of Adam.



I think I'll have a better view of the island.
Maybe I could come around from that way?

I have no idea what way he means by this, so I'm just going to continue moving along the entirely linear path up the waterfall.



Up a few more ledges, I ditch Skye and have a rummage around on the top of the cliff by myself.



Restores incredibly small amount of hunger. Generally not worth bothering with other than to consume an entire field of them on the spot to restore a decent chunk of Hunger.



Further on, I find a stick. Also, Skye's tired. Totally should've packed more energy mushrooms.

A stiff wooden stick. I can make a weapon with this!

Spear has been added to Tool Making.

But I already have a spear? It's added to the menu when Keith and Skye have their little chat about it, I have no idea why this only triggers after collecting a stick since it's not like I broke the sequence by finding bamboo first.

Maybe I can make stronger weapons by being creative.
I made a spear! I should try equipping it.

Go to backpack and select tools to equip them.

Apparently creating a spear out of bamboo has totally caused the game's script to shit the bed since it spat all this out at me at once. I don't see why, bamboo can be found just lying around in the very first area.



At this point I remember pushing L or R cycles the function of the top screen, the most useful of which being this map. Our cave is just slightly out of shot to the right, so we're basically on the cliff just above our home right now.




I need to do something about this boulder...

So I walk in front of the boulder and immediately start another cutscene.

Music: Progress


Yes.
Now push!
Yes! It's moving!



Pathway created.

We did it! Now we can go through here.



Yes, I'm just a little tired.
Maybe we should go back to our cave and rest before going further.
Yeah, that's a good idea.

Music: Cave


The game takes a shocking amount of mercy on you at this point and instantly warps the pair of you back to the cave.

Thanks, I couldn't have done that without you.

He really couldn't have. If you go up there on your own there's another separate cutscene where Keith realises he needs Skye's help to move the boulder. I did not want to make that journey twice for some minor flavour text, so I cheated and broke the sequence a little for my own convenience.

No problem.

Story progress made, I hit the hay to recuperate the Stamina the trip drained.



Looking good for once. Join us next time to explore what lies beyond the waterfall.