A “Live, Die, Repeat” method for playing Subsistence

Overview

How to stop being frustrated by early death in Subsistence and learn to live with it

“Live, Die, Repeat” method

I got frustrated with early, frequent deaths, and respawning without valuable resources that I had gathered before I died. And trying to recover the loot box I left behind when dying before it disappeared wasn’t easy either. I really got frustrated during one game when I killed a wolf, butchered it for meat, fully cooked the meat, ate the cooked wolf meat, and then died of hunger a minute or two later. Who dies of hunger shortly after eating a cooked steak?!

I then thought of the SF movie “Live, Die, Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow” (with Tom Cruise and Emily Blount) and tried the following different approach: Live, gather resources and build, prepare for death, and then die, respawn, and repeat.

What follows is not for hardcore gamers or gamers wanting to rough it. It is a method for beginners, casual players, or people frustrated with the current level of frequent dying to learn the mechanics of the game and become more comfortable with it before playing it at a harder level. And the method requires a lot of patience. Here’s how I did it:

1. I started a New Game set at Easy and w/o Hunters to focus on the basic mechanics of the game. I avoided animals, ate whatever food I needed to stay alive, gathered resources, and then built a wooden foundation, a wooden wall, a Base Command Unit (BCU), and a storage container. I placed the foundation on a high rock near a water source, placed the wooden wall on the foundation, placed the BCU on the wooden wall, and placed the storage container on the foundation. I then stored EVERYTHING, except my ax and glowstick, in the storage container.

2. The BCU transmits a beacon signal which looks like a small symbol (a dot in a circle) that appears when you face in the direction of your base. But, when you die and respawn, the BCU beacon does not begin transmitting until 100 seconds after you respawn. During that 100 seconds, you have no easy way to orient yourself in the direction of your base.

3. After building my small base, I remained near it, avoided animals, gathered more resources, and stored them in the storage container at my base to grow my stockpile. I did this until I began to lose health from hunger — because after building my base I ate nothing and stored any discovered berries or other food in the storage container to build a food stockpile. As I was losing health, I returned to my base, placed any discovered food or resources in the storage container, and waited to die on the wooden foundation of my base.

4. When I respawned, I did not have to wait 100 seconds for the BCU beacon to begin transmitting. After I respawned, I just moved in the direction of the skull (indicating where I had died and left a box of loot), which was the direction of my base since I had deliberately stayed there when I was dying of hunger. Since I only had an ax and a glow stick when I respawned, it was very dangerous to return to my base (especially at night, when I could fall off a cliff or run into a wolf or bear). When I died on the way back to my base and respawned, I just moved in the direction of the skulls (one indicating a loot box where I died at my base, and the other skull indicating a loot box where I died on my way toward my base).

5. After getting back to my base, I repeated Steps 3 and 4, gathering more resources to expand my base, build more equipment, and stockpile food for the future. Once I get enough resources. I will add a bed to my base because then I will respawn at my base whenever I die.

Because the game is Early Access and undergoing revisions, my “Live, Die, Repeat” method may not work with future versions of the game.

Some acknowledgements

The Rangers Survival School guide has good advice about avoiding animals .

Winter NET’s “A Beginners Guide and Tips/Tricks to Survival” has a good suggestion for how to place your base w/o a Base Command Unit to help you locate it visually. This will help avoid triggering Hunters if you started the game with the Hunters option.