Gathering and Building
Walking the Kettle tells you what is in it. This chapter is what you do about that.
There are five building materials and everything you raise is made of them: @Missing file, @Missing file, @Missing file, @Missing file and @Missing file. There is a sixth material, @Missing file, which is not built with — it is cut off things you kill and cooked at a camp for hit points.
Two ways to get material
Off open ground. Stand anywhere and take one unit of whatever that terrain grows. Meadow gives thatch and cord, woodland gives timber and cord, highland gives stone, marsh gives thatch and clay. No roll, no limit, and the tile is never used up.
It is also one unit at a time, which is slow on purpose. Open ground is the floor that stops bad luck from stranding you, not the way to fill a basket.
Off a node. Some tiles carry a proper working — @Missing file for timber, @Missing file for thatch, @Missing file for clay, @Missing file for cord, @Missing file for stone. A node gives three to five units at once, usually for a roll. None of them are ever used up either.
You cannot gather on a tile with something alive on it. Fight it or leave. This matters most in the marsh, which is the only source of clay and is contested on every tile — but nothing here comes back, so winning that fight once opens clay for good.
What you can carry
Sixteen units. That is it, and one unit of anything counts the same as one unit of anything else.
You will hit that ceiling early and it will decide how you play. The number comes from Might, so it does not improve much for someone built like @Missing file.
The build order
Everything is raised on the tile you are standing on, and everything after the first is raised on the same tile as the first. A tile with a lean-to on it is your camp.
| Build | Costs | Needs first |
|---|---|---|
| @Missing file | 4 timber, 3 thatch, 2 cord | — |
| @Missing file | 5 stone | Lean-To |
| @Missing file | 4 cord, 4 thatch | Lean-To |
| @Missing file | 4 stone, 3 clay | Fire Ring |
| @Missing file | 12 timber, 10 thatch, 8 stone, 6 clay, 6 cord | all four |
A failed build roll never costs you the materials. You lose the day, not the fortnight of hauling.
Why the basket is not optional
The hut costs forty-two units. You can carry sixteen.
@Missing file holds sixty at your camp, and you can move material in and out of it freely while standing there. So the shape of the middle game is fixed: go out, fill up, come back, tip it into the basket, go out again. Three trips minimum, and that walk is the game.
Material in the basket is at that camp. It is not with you, and you cannot build somewhere else out of it.
The hut
@Missing file is the end of the first stretch. It takes everything the basin produces and a Might roll against 12.
When it stands, a pin appears on the map and the hut has an inside — @Missing file, one room, dug down and banked with turf, and the only ground in the Kettle that belongs to anybody.
Cooking
@Missing file is the piece that pays for itself. Standing at a camp that has them, spend one joint of @Missing file and get 4 HP back. No roll, and the meat is gone whether you needed all of it or not.
That is the only renewable healing in the game — @Missing file restores you fully but sits where it sits, and rations run out. Between a hearth and a herd of @Missing file in the marsh, a camp becomes somewhere you can actually recover, which is what makes the hardest fights approachable at all.