Lesson 06 : Fire, cooking and water boiling.

The long dark have several skills and the longer you play the better you will become in those skills(see skills below) and fire starting is probably the most important skill of them all.Fire and you will lead a symbiotic relationship. You will feed it wood and paper and it will provide you with light, warmth, the ability to cook and boil water as well as ward off wolves.To start a fire you will need an starter, fuel, tinder and accelerant(optional). You may think that you should save the best starters with the highest chances of success for later and use those with less chances first but that would be wrong(see more on this in tips and tricks).At first you're going to suck a starting fires, no doubt about it. Different fire starting methods have different chances of success as do different types of fuels. The more fires you light the more skilled you will become and the easier it will be to start a fire.Fire can be lit pretty much everywhere outside. Fires can not be lit if the weather is too bad. Placing your fire in a place that is going to be protected from wind is a good idea when possible.The wind shield shows that your current location is sheltered from wind at the moment. You can use this to indicate that the place you are in is good to place a fire in.Fires lit inside buildings and caves are limited to the mouths of caves with *loading screens*(caves with no transitional areas count as "outside" areas) and in some rare cases entire cave systems. Fires can not be lit inside buildings outside of "fireboxes" (e.g fire barrel or pot belly stove). In addition, fire can also NOT be lit on wooden surfaces such as docks or inside train carts.Fires that burn long enough can be later harvest for charcoal(see mapping below). Fire wood is lost for good once you put in into a fire(see tips and tricks) if a wind blows the fire out that's it. It is best to fuel a fire with a couple of hours worth of fuel and not more to avoid wasting all of your fuel.Cooking and boiling water are an inseparable part of day to day life.Lit fires will allow you to cook or boil water. To cook and item bring up the radial menu and pick the item.You will now have the item "floating", place it on the red spots next to or above the fire.You can place open cans and cups next to a fire to cook/heat them. Meat can only be cooked on the "cooking spots" as seen in the image above.Boiling water works just like cooking but unlike cooking it requires tools. A recycled can or a pot is required to melt and boil water. Cooking tools can be found in your inventory in the "tools" section of via the radial menu as shown above.Water that has been melted is not safe to drink(see lesson 09) and has to be boiled.Got a fire going? Good. Hydrate and proceed to lesson 7.