The Thirst: Utes

Your character has three central survival statistics:

Food and water are always slowly draining. The faster you travel, the faster they drain. Walking increases consumption, while running increases it much more heavily.

Stamina is depleted by movement and drains faster as you increase your speed. Travelling on roads is considerably less exhausting than crossing open terrain, hills, or wilderness.

When stamina reaches zero, your character becomes EXHAUSTED.

You may still force yourself onward, but exhaustion creates a real survival debt. A long run now can leave you without enough water to complete the next journey, escape a fight, or safely reach another water source.

Rest and allow your stamina to recover fully to 100 to remove exhaustion.

Movement is not only about speed. It also affects how easily other players can locate you.

Running—including crouch-running—while armed with a pistol or rifle temporarily marks your movement, making you easier to spot.

• Full sprinting is treated as a short combat movement and does not create this marker.
• Running while unarmed also does not mark you.

This creates a choice between efficient, controlled travel and exposing yourself by moving quickly with a weapon ready.

Utes contains four military bases.

Weapons and ammunition periodically appear near the guard posts at their entrances—the small barred buildings often called guardhouses or jails.

Near military barracks, you may find:

• watches;
• compasses.

Maps can appear near camouflaged military buildings and inside towns.

Binoculars can be found at:

• the northern harbour;
• the lighthouses;
• the airstrip control tower.

Navigation equipment matters because players do not begin fully informed and equipped. Learning the island and locating the tools needed to navigate it are part of survival.

Water is found primarily in towns.

The available sources are water pumps and the fountain. Every source contains a finite amount of water, and its supply periodically replenishes.

A player may deliberately consume an entire water source, denying it to anyone who arrives later. This can be used as a tactical survival method—but it also removes that source as a safety net for the player who emptied it.

Food is also found in towns.

It appears around chicken coops and rabbit cages. Like water, the available food supply is finite and periodically replenishes.

A town that was useful earlier may already have been stripped by another survivor.

The island currently supports:

• 6 survivor bots
• 2 bandits armed with Makarov pistols
• 1 bandit armed with an AK-74

They periodically respawn and move through the same survival space as human players, creating distant gunshots, temporary danger zones, and armed pressure around important routes.

The AI population can be switched on or off by standing near the flagpole close to the player spawn area.

The bots are not intended to turn Utes into a permanent PvE warzone. They exist to make the island feel inhabited and to create occasional uncertainty while preserving long periods of travel, silence, and tension.