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 This is a game about a lone murderhobo against the elements and also wildlife that hates you. In the words of the developers: quote:THE LONG DARK is a thoughtful, exploration-survival experience that challenges solo players to think for themselves as they explore an expansive frozen wilderness in the aftermath of a geomagnetic disaster. There are no zombies — only you, the cold, and all the threats Mother Nature can muster. I've spent a fair chunk of time in this game. It is relaxing and stressful and switches between those two feelings almost at random. One minute you're taking a casual stroll through the snow to your next objective, next minute you are suffering from 2 sprained ankles and three wolves are closing in on you. I have never achieved 500 days survived in this game. That is my goal here. On the hardest difficulty. If I die I am almost certainly going to have a hissyfit and never play again. The hardest difficulty included by the developers (there are also custom difficulty settings wherein you can make the game even more sadistic) sports a great list of features: quote:"You are not part of Mother Nature's plan, and you will bear the full force of her wrath. The true test of Human vs. Nature." -The Long Dark Game Text It shows this welcoming image when you select this option:  The game looks a lot like this:  The General Run The game in interloper goes something like this: 1. Run around barely clothed in freezing conditions 2. Find shelter and loot everything 3. Repeat steps 1-2 until you have looted the map or decide to move to a new one 4. Go to new map, repeat steps 1-2 5. Do all of this without dying, whilst looking for tools to begin your forge run 6. Once tools are acquired, hit a map with a forge and craft arrowheads, axe and knife 7. Begin killing wildlife enmasse and turning them into clothes 8. Loot other maps, climb the summit of timberwolf mountain and enjoy the scenic view and containers full of goodies 9. Live forever wherever you like Janitor Ludwich IV posted:This probably should have been in OP, but we can craft arrowheads at a forge, arrow shafts from birch saplings and crows feathers for the fletching, for the bow we must acquire a maple sapling and some guts, which can be acquired from dead deer, or throwing rocks at rabbits. If you do all of this you have mastered the run, and can live in relative comfort while managing a range of conditions (mainly cabin fever, which forces you to leave the house, something goons are unfamiliar with and is thus unrealistic). Oh yeah, be careful of these things:  They look nice but they make the residents of Great Bear Island even more murderous than usual. Giving them supernatural powers and a new intimidating texture. Preferable to stay inside and read the paragraph sized note on the laptop for a few hours if you have that luxury. Having said all of that, it should really be quite easy. I've stoned rabbits to death from over 25 meters. I've climbed the highest peaks, I've survived 100 days in lower difficulties. I expect this will be a short and unfulfilling LP. I apologise for wasting your time if you read this. If you're wondering when the next stream will occur, you can use this sure to be always up to date link: https://www.twitch.tv/moistsack There's a schedule on that page there that you can use to see when the next stream is. Generally a stream might last around 2 hours unless I get a huge windfall of time on the weekend or something. Snow Citizen 1 Days 1-4 Days 5-6 Snow Citizen 2 Days 1-2 Days 3-4 Days 5-6 Day 7 & Week 1 Status Update Day 8-9 Day 10-12 Day 13-15 Day 16 Janitor Ludwich IV fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Oct 20, 2019 |
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Oct 8, 2019 01:58
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Pre-game Start the game, choose your class (male or female), decide on two badges. I have picked efficient machine and cold fusion:   Efficient machine will help us keep the ‘Well fed’ buff. Which enables us to carry an extra 5 kgs before sprain risk increases. Cold fusion essentially gives us a free piece of clothing with a +2 bonus to air temps. There are other nice badges, a couple that help with sprinting, and the one I wish I had which is a fire starting buff (gives you level 3 firestarting from the outset, which means you don’t need tinder, as well as bonuses to being able to actually start a fire). With that out of the way, I name my sandbox ‘Snow Citizen1’, pre-emptively as I’m sure to die before attaining my goals. Day 1 Perhaps I’ll die a little sooner than I had thought. There’s one map I’m very unfamiliar with. Hushed River Valley. One of the features of interloper is starting in a random map picked from the harder maps. I get the privilege (death sentence) of starting in Hushed River Valley (henceforth ‘HRV’). No matter the game scorns me before I’m even aware of this fact. quote:”No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” -Cormac McCarthy, The Road I think the game is telling me I shouldn’t have goals, just carpe diem or whatever. Seize the pain. It’s just prior to sunrise, I am lost and nigh halfway to freezing. I take a quick surveyance of the lands around and attempt to pick a direction. Some indecision due to most directions including a painful looking fall and I’m off. A minute later I am freezing. Hypothermia risk sets in. Frostbite too. Both things are bad, and you don’t want to experience them. Frostbite is a sure way to killing yourself in favour of a better run. I manage to find an ice cave. It’s dark as gently caress:  I pass some time playing imaginary cards to warm up and shed some light on the cave. After a couple of hours its light enough for me to differentiate between shades of black. Occasional luminescent blues also provide relief from the unrelenting dark. I find a dead guy with a torch. Perhaps a similar fate awaits me now. Not yet though, as I find some rabbit (cooked) and a couple of other useful items, box of tea and a whetstone or something. They should be useful if I ever make it out of HRV, and the rabbit is soon to be eaten to stave off starvation a little longer. Maybe that’s a mistake, or I could have at least saved a bit for a decoy, but I’m not the smartest survivor. Eat the rabbit, leave the cave. The moment I step out I am filled with dread. The map is huge, I reflect. Thorny bushes flank me and keep me from proceeding in various directions. I find a scrub brush free zone, but a wolf lays in wait. He’s no match for my sprint button. Once again, I am freezing. I find my second cave; however, I continue to freeze as this one does not have the same warmth bonus as the ice caves. I do snag some work boots which are better than the dress shoes I had decided to wear into the wilderness for whatever reason. Back into the valley I go. Frostbite risk increasing probably around 50% chance of permanently losing a finger or ear or something, I hurry, and incur a couple of sprains and tear some clothing trying to speed run. I hump an ankle high rock for a bit: https://youtu.be/a41MYcqbqBw?t=967 Some mountain goating later, I find a secondary ice cave. Matches, hacksaw, food, reading material and the all-important bedroll. I start to believe I can survive this; I sit by the fire boiling snow into water, cooking my beans I know I have seized the pain. I still don’t know how to get out of HRV but at least if I manage to do so I have some key items. The hacksaw allows me to harvest frozen carcasses left over from the before times. The bedroll lets me sleep wherever I need to, and the matches are good for smoking cessation. Outside of the cave I catch a decent view of the sunset:  It almost looks exactly like that screenshot I posted in the OP. I do take in the view very briefly, as a wolf is chasing me. Off I go again. Some more mountain goating is necessitated: https://youtu.be/a41MYcqbqBw?t=1703 As the sun sets, I begin to regret leaving the safety of the ice cave. After that regretful moment I find a cave, one of the non-ice cave caves. Good enough to warm up in while I’ve got my torch burning. I decide to cook a salvaged rabbit and take a 9-hour sleep. I awake freezing in aurora. Welcome to day 2. Day 2 With no choices but to proceed. I head in a direction. The aurora gives welcome scenic views, but it also makes me more terrified than usual. To run into a wolf now would be certain death. Once again scrub brush blocks my path, so I head back to the cave and light another fire with some collected sticks. I sleep for another couple of hours. Eat a breakfast of sardines and begin the mountain goat as I am otherwise completely trapped: https://youtu.be/a41MYcqbqBw?t=2250 I sidle passed a wolf and head back to where I was, not all that long ago; which I am not aware that I am doing this for certain, only in hindsight do I realise what an idiot I am. A long rope climb with a brief break on a ledge: https://youtu.be/a41MYcqbqBw?t=2380 At the summit of the rope, it does not take me long to recognise where I am. One of the ice caves. I stop inside to warm myself up and ensure that I am in fact in the same place I was before. I am. The good news is there’s a direction I haven’t been in from here. So, I rest to warm up and prepare for more freezing. In combination with my ongoing starvation this can hurt quite a bit. I am starting to lose that hope of escaping this hell hole. This fear is reflected in the final hope I had for getting out of here being blocked by scrub brush, surrender to despair: https://youtu.be/a41MYcqbqBw?t=2724 I give some inclined mountain goating techniques a go, and after a few attempts I manage to achieve a high enough elevation to propel me over the scrub brush, partly thanks to a well-timed sprain seemingly glitching me through some terrain: https://youtu.be/a41MYcqbqBw?t=2787 A small victory but I am still lost. At least until I spot a cave: https://youtu.be/a41MYcqbqBw?t=2838 That is a cave. It is the cave. Relief, I escaped. I was so certain I’d wasted my time writing that OP when I spawned in HRV. Of course, there’s still another 498 or so days to go. I am starving, sprained in various places, but not quite freezing. I do some first aid, bandage my sprains allowing me to sprint again, which I will make generous use of to get me to the first man made structure of the run. A small container on the outskirts of Milton proper. I stop to loot, warm up and sleep 5 hours. Next stop Milton’s Church. Night trips feature poor visibility. In game is not as bad as it looks rewatching the stream quality I can barely see the snow falling into my face. Great viewer experience. Stumbling through the dark picking up sticks, things go south quickly. Wolves start their approach, so I stop in a car and exit way too quickly, directly on top of a wolf. Somehow, I sprint away, however the wolf has already decided it’s going to eat me. I grab my prybar and somehow get it off me; I suffer a sprain, but no bleeding or death. Another wolf is still stalking me, so I put some space between us and patch up my ankle. I find myself at the local farmstead instead of the church, which means I need to find a key in pitch black, winds too strong for a torch to be of much use. Thankfully I find enough firewood to warm up on the farm’s porch and drink copious amounts of tea (5 or 6 mugs). I eventually find the key in a tractor. I head inside the farmstead proper and consider myself lucky. I sleep for the rest of day 2. Day 3 Day 3 goes much better. I loot a bunch of food from the farmstead, spend the morning patching up my clothes before heading off to the township to loot as much as possible. There’s little to no freezing, I gather lots of food. I stay another night in Milton at the local old lady’s mansion (RIP).  Top loot includes a heavy hammer from the farmstead, some pieces of clothing I had open slots for (jackets and underpants, some combat pants). Not much to report. The best thing I can say is we finally made it to some toilets to drink from. I must have left around 10 litres of toilet water around Milton should I ever return. Day 4 I finish looting Milton and have quite a stockpile of useful things. I head for Milton Park to leave but it’s nearing the end of the day and I’m quite tired. However, I have planned everything to perfection and I have just enough energy to complete the two rope climbs without incident; though it was touch and go: https://youtu.be/a41MYcqbqBw?t=6900 I loot some cattails as I enter the cave connection to Mystery lake. This is the end of the session. Things should go much more smoothly from here. The rest of day 4 will either be sleeping in a cave or heading to Trapper’s homestead, the closest man-made shelter to the Milton – Mystery Lake cave connector.     From here we head to Mysterly lake and loot, then it’s time to head to either Forlorn Muskegg and choose between there or heading to Broken Railroad (both have forges). Alternatively, Coastal highway with Desolation point as the goal for forging. Forlorn Muskegg/Broken Railroad is likely to be the safer option in terms of wolf encounters, however, heading toward Desolation Point brings plenty of opportunities to loot.
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Oct 9, 2019 07:03
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I had a period of absolutely loving this game, I got a bit sick of it eventually (the item degradation system is frustrating, and once you've played a bit you never get the experience of having to actually explore) but it's still a lot of fun. I haven't played since a bit before the UI rework so I'm interested to see if there's much different.
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Oct 9, 2019 21:52
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So is the overall strategy to find the town, find a house to be your home base and keep your loot there to survive or...?
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Oct 10, 2019 06:11
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How severe is the temperature drop over time? If you're saying 500 days like it's doable it can't be that bad.
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Oct 10, 2019 06:51
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RabidWeasel posted:I had a period of absolutely loving this game, I got a bit sick of it eventually (the item degradation system is frustrating, and once you've played a bit you never get the experience of having to actually explore) but it's still a lot of fun. This is my experience with the game also. It's incredibly addictive in the early game but once you survive for a decent amount of time and feel like you can become a hermit it just loses a lot of the joy. Interloper is still a challenge for me. I hope to master it soon, and then I guess TLD is done with. It's one of my most played games though, so for $20 I can't be too harsh. SSNeoman posted:So is the overall strategy to find the town, find a house to be your home base and keep your loot there to survive or...? That certainly works in lower difficulties where loot is plentiful, you can loot one region and bet setup for a long haul. You could do similar on interloper if you were committed to collecting sticks all the time and fishing. You can even delay crafting important tools for a very long time if you really know the game. Ideally the game to me would be to travel the entire map looting everything and bringing it all to wherever you want to live. There are a few places that are very popular among the community. Particularly either 'main' base in mystery lake (trapper's homestead or lake cabin), the next favourite for long term survival is coastal highway either at the fishing cabins there or on a small island of snow with a cabin called jackrabbit's cabin. Coastal highway has long term loot, as you can comb the beaches about once per week for new goodies that have washed ashore. Once you secure long term safety the question is how long can you go without either doing something stupid and dying... Or how long you can survive the boredom of taking 0 risks and mostly living like a hermit. The old interloper meta was to starve consistently and only eat before sleeping to regain the condition you'd lost. The developers thankfully changed that by using both carrot and stick. tomanton posted:How severe is the temperature drop over time? If you're saying 500 days like it's doable it can't be that bad. It is severe enough that you will be restricted to wearing the heaviest loot if you want to stay warm which reduces your ability to sprint. Don't quote me on this but I think the world stops getting colder around Day 100. Lowest temperatures depend on the zone you're in but 500 days is certainly doable. Unless you're me. My longest has been around 60 days before either dying or doing something stupid (broke my best save by 'flying' into a cave entrance which reset my entire character) or feeling like I'm fighting a losing battle.
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Oct 10, 2019 12:58
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Day 5 In the cave connecting Milton to Mystery Lake. All is well. I drink the remainder of my water and sleep for a few hours. Flare in hand I venture the cave quickscoping coal into my backpack. Minutes later I'm outside in Mystery Lake ('ML'). The friendliest of all regions! You could never die here, unless you're a god drat idiot. I can see trapper's homestead from the cave exit and head in.  Find a mag lens (important for starting fires without matches), a sewing kit, and a few other goodies. I crack open a safe and find a pry bar. My third at this point, will be scrap metal later. I decide to dump most of my stuff here with the intention of completing a circuit around ML. I sleep away the early hours of the morning and wake up to a blizzard. I use the opportunity to attempt to read a sewing books, failing the first hour due to extreme thirst. Really gotta watch those meters. I do get a couple of hours done after a drink, and the blizzard subsides. I head what I think is north gathering sticks, dodging wolves, looting dead guys and crow feathers scattered nearby them. I meet a bear at an unnamed pond.  He wants to say hello but I quickly run for the hills. This brings me to a lonely cabin named 'cabin'. This guy got to die in unnamed cabin by unnamed pond, truly a fate worthy of the history books:  I head back outside to visit some more lootworthy locales. I get to clearcut with the damaged tower in mind:  I ascend to the top and find a dead deer to carve up into delicious meaty chunks. I do this by the fire, and cook the deer for consumption, from farm to plate. I own the production line top down. A blizzard starts to roll after my post venison nap so I head in a straight line, after a pit stop for another fire to avoid frostbite I find my way back to trapper’s homestead. Sleep well. Day 6 I wake around midday and the weather is perfect for looting. Snowing but not blizzarding and relatively warm, a bit of wind, but nothing to be concerned about. I head to the camp office by the lake proper. I find goodies, such as an additional pair of combat pants, a sewing kit, some socks. I head down to the lake as strong winds set in. I go through a few fishing huts, finding a few more items. I hit the cabins on the other side of the lake where holidaymakers would presumably stay on weekend visits. I find a maple leafed tuque in one of them. A great find with its +2C warmth bonus. I start to feel confident, cocky. This run is going so well. All I need now is some gloves. I’m walking along to the last fishing hut to loot as crows fly overhead, signalling the weather is about to change. Next thing I know a wolf is heading in my direction. Usually a one off wolf isn’t too much to be concerned about. Today, however, my hubris got the better of me. I throw a rock at the wolf to show my superiority. It immediately charged at me. I desperately headed for the last fishing hut to find the door closed. I quickly opened the door, the wolf jumped me before I could get inside. https://youtu.be/Ya8VsPg8_lI?t=1116 A struggle with the crowbar later and I’m on around 5% condition and bleeding out. I go inside to bandage... I have no bandages. I used them all on sprains. I begin crafting a bandage and fade into the long dark with the futility of my actions in mind. Bless this game. You see this is just a minor set back along the way to 500. I always knew I’d die in record time since my first ever interloper runs. Snow Citizen2 has learned a valuable lesson about not poking the wildlife and will surely make it to 500 days with no issue whatsoever. Really this run was cursed from the start when I spawned in HRV. I should have just killed myself there but I was stubborn. Poor decision making is me. Good luck future snow citizen. You're gonna need it I think.
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Oct 10, 2019 15:21
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Wow okay that was loving quick. How're you supposed to kill wolves without guns then?
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Oct 10, 2019 17:48
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SSNeoman posted:Wow okay that was loving quick. How're you supposed to kill wolves without guns then? This probably should have been in OP, but we can craft arrowheads at a forge, arrow shafts from birch saplings and crows feathers for the fletching, for the bow we must acquire a maple sapling and some guts, which can be acquired from dead deer, or throwing rocks at rabbits. To get the saplings we need a hacksaw (which I had in that run, and had collected a few birch saplings, but I didn't mention it because I hosed it all up and died). So usually you will spend the first probably 10 days at least without a weapon. The timing varies depending on how quickly you get a hacksaw and collect saplings to dry which I think takes around 4 or 5 days, then you need a heavy hammer + a bunch of coal to get one of the forges up to at least 150C to turn scrap metal into arrowheads. There is no strict order for doing these things. Last run prior to my snow citizen death I found a heavy hammer straight away and crafting ~30 arrowheads, my axe and my knife before even finding a hacksaw, so I used my crafted axe to harvest the saplings instead. These are the 2 major impediments early game, heavy hammer and hacksaw then doing all associated tasks to get yourself a weapon. Although the hacksaw isn't a necessity as I said, but it can be a big time saver, your saplings can be drying/curing while you're out forging and be ready for crafting upon your return. We died quickly due to my own stupidity. Next time I resolve not to get myself killed throwing rocks at wolves for no real reason. A rock should only be used on a wolf in dire circumstances, when they've already elected to charge you, if you bonk them on the head with a rock while they're in that state they might change their minds. However I don't think it works while they're in stalking mode, because the moment I loosed that rock it seemed to want my bits, it didn't look like it was waiting to see where the rock landed or anything. I also didn't bring my best weapon for defense (the heavy hammer) and I didn't have bandages, this is really all on me playing too fast and loose. I poked the drat bear.
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Oct 11, 2019 00:16
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I can just see most of these runs ending before you even reach a cabin. esp since they start you like near naked
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Oct 11, 2019 20:37
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Interloper isn't fun for me. There's challenge, and then there's "you're going to get blizzards multiple times a day for a week straight and won't be able to do anything at all because you'll get lost and freeze five steps away from whatever hole you're hiding in, but you have to leave because it's the first few days and you haven't stockpiled much food yet so you're just dead no matter what". I love this game even at its most merciless but Interloper pisses me off because you generally don't have a chance to actually try to survive. Being hosed unless you plan well enough = fun. Being hosed no matter what = not fun. It's possible I've just been unlucky, admittedly, but my few attempts have all been very similar and it put me off, so I stick to lesser difficulties. Heck, I like playing Pilgrim and just walking around looking at how very pretty the game is.
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Oct 12, 2019 08:58
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SSNeoman posted:I can just see most of these runs ending before you even reach a cabin. esp since they start you like near naked That should only really happen if I start in Hushed River Valley, I know the rest of the maps well enough. Although spawning in a blizzard could lead to me getting lost and dying also. Black Robe posted:Interloper isn't fun for me. There's challenge, and then there's "you're going to get blizzards multiple times a day for a week straight and won't be able to do anything at all because you'll get lost and freeze five steps away from whatever hole you're hiding in, but you have to leave because it's the first few days and you haven't stockpiled much food yet so you're just dead no matter what". I love this game even at its most merciless but Interloper pisses me off because you generally don't have a chance to actually try to survive. Being hosed unless you plan well enough = fun. Being hosed no matter what = not fun. That's fair. Interloper seemed ridiculous to me for a long time but now I couldn't imagine playing on anything else (though I do miss having guns, which makes custom settings attractive) but there's something I really like about the struggle against all of the games systems. I wouldn't say you're hosed no matter what, lots of people have survived insane amounts of time on interloper it's just a matter of mastery, a little bit of luck and care go a long way as well. I do miss being able to relax a little more at times, stop and watch the sunrise or sunset, rather than constantly be doing something to further my survival but I think there's a point in interloper where you can do those things. We'll see, hopefully.
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Oct 14, 2019 10:08
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Pre-game Nothing has changed here. I select interloper, female, efficient machine and cold fusion. Random quote generator gives us an equally damning message:  It will take a lot of courage to continue living after about day 100. It’s no easy feat to continue to find reasons to push forward and get through each day once you feel you have conquered the survival aspect. The next aspect of the game is finding ways to entertain yourself for the next 400 days. Of course, this requires that you live for more then a week, then a month, first. Our first challenge is sadly, one week survived, after last runs pathetic conclusion. Here we go. Fair warning if you watch any amount of the youtube video, I’m mostly dead silent for this session. I am pretty sure that means I’d make a bad streamer, but I was certain no one was watching and if they did come, they’d leave pretty quickly. I usually try to make some attempt at commentary, but I didn’t have it in me this eve’. Day 1 With much relief, I spawn somewhere other than the Hushed River Valley. No longer shall we live in despair. Instead, we choose desolation. We’re in Desolation Point (‘DP’); this little zone is jam packed full of things to see and do. Its small size hides its danger and its benefits. There is a forge here:  In the busted old boat on the bottom deck (poop?) there be coal and a furnace. There’s also a cosy place to spend a night or two:  I dig the lighthouse mainly because I have a secret entrance that lets me avoid most the danger of the region. I shall show you this when we go to visit. For now, we head to the Riken and loot. It’s quite dismal, dark and desolate of anything useful. Point being if you really want to loot this place properly, you’re best to bring a light source. At least I can see my own breath, so I guess I’m still alive:  I think I find a can of soup and some socks or something. I head to Hibernia Processing. This is another cool place, where they turned whales into lamp fuel or last resort sardines, I guess. There are a few containers where the workers would sleep and then even some extra beds in the upper area of the facility. I find it quite immersive. There are even some little story touches, there’s a hidden loot spot you can find where someone has consumed a few rations and sodas, in this reality they’ve also left me a bedroll. I haven’t concluded whether they were just trying to survive here post apocalypse or if they were just slacking off work: https://youtu.be/eYdXwewMwQI?t=767 I’ll let you make your own headcannon and give you a shot of the interior:  Despite the size and number of containers to search I don’t find anything I’m really looking for, the best loot I find is in a safe on the lower level, I find a mackinaw jacket. I am not 100% sure but I think this is one of the best coats you find in interloper. I was hoping I’d find a heavy hammer mainly, just to craft a few arrowheads. I would not have said no to a prybar to open some of the lockers that you can’t without one, or a hacksaw to get some extra metal should I find a heavy hammer elsewhere in DP (though that would be unlikely).  I finish up looting a few other bits and pieces and head to the lighthouse to spend the night. I don’t know if I’m the only one who uses this way into the lighthouse, but I can proudly say I discovered it on my own, so make use of it if you ever decide to visit: https://youtu.be/eYdXwewMwQI?t=1290 This entrance has the added advantage of allowing some beach combing on your way up. I find a cotton toque, and a raw fish (just prior to that timestamp) who has washed ashore. Some 900 calories, mighty nice. At the lighthouse I find a dead guy who has dropped his scarf, some meds, another 2 cotton toques, plaid shirt to go with my jacket, accelerant, and a note:  I start a fire with accelerant to guarantee the match is not wasted (I think I have around 20 matches all up). Another cursory search around the lighthouse with a torch reveals nothing. I cook my fish, boil some water for the night and day 2 and finish day 1. Day 2 I wake up as the sun is rising, which is generally the coldest part of the day. I stay in and do some research regarding proper cooking. I leave just barely after sunrise; it is still very cold. I leg it for the stone church which is a convenient stop on my way out of Desolation Point. There’s nothing really left for me here, and I can’t craft so it’s onward to coastal highway to look for tools.  I find some fleece gloves which means I’m no longer going to suffer frostbite risk when things get too cold. All my bits are covered. I head for another pitstop on my way out, the abandoned mine No.5? I should find them all someday. I search what I can in the dark, mostly coal and a useless book. I nap here to warm up in my recently acquired bedroll before heading out. Another cave is our destination. This one leads us out of Desolation Point. I enter Old Island Connector, the No.3 Coal mine, search what I can before burning my only torch with no possibility of making a new one so I have to be quick unless I want to stumble around here in the dark or consume more matches starting fires. This means I don’t properly loot the place, just grab some opportune coal as I’m moving quickly through. I make it right on time for my torch to burn out. This brings us to a transition zone. Crumbling Highway. The death of many a would-be survivor. It’s essentially the games corridor shooter. Wolves stand between you and the other side. For interlopers it often means going through here and crossing your fingers there’s no wolf hiding just over some hill you can’t quite see over, or around the other side of a rock waiting to ambush you. I unfortunately did not take any screenshots, but the run through starts here: https://youtu.be/eYdXwewMwQI?t=2338 It’s a pretty quick journey on 2.0 speed. We take a quick pitstop in the Harris’ basement and find some meds in a first aid kit and a t-shirt in their washing machine. Re-emerging to instant barks. Time to run. The wolf pursues us to where the highway has crumbled, which requires crouching under a boulder perched upon the road. I’m not sure if the wolves will eat you here if you haven’t got enough distance between you and them but I don’t wish to find out. We’re now in Coastal Highway!  There are a lot of toilets to drink from here. Fire starting will not be required unless we’re fighting off the cold. There’s plenty of locations to loot, though most of them are destroyed on interloper. Nevertheless, I head for yet another death trap in Quonset garage. We must brave death if we want to find the tools we need. This one gives me a good fright but no bites today. https://youtu.be/eYdXwewMwQI?t=2760 Plenty of furries around. Inside is tea (good for recovery while sleeping), sardines, matches, toilet water (No cistern!), sewing book, a hoodie (farewell plaid shirt), a can of soda, a box of simple tools, storm lantern(!), charcoal, painkillers, a muesli bar, a bandage, a granola bar, a wool toque(!), and a note  No tools. The lantern is a nice addition to my growing backpack. I crouch and leave the station just in case there’s wolves, crouching will give me a bit longer before they notice me. I head for the only other building still standing in the area and do a sweep, another 1.8 litres of toilet water to add to my swelling bladder. I do some repairs on my clothes with the last of the light for the day then some other miscellany before heading to bed (tearing down curtains and harvesting useless clothes for cloth mainly). Day 3 will see us continuing our Coastal Highway one way track in search of hacksaws, hammers and pry bars. Janitor Ludwich IV fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Oct 14, 2019 |
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Oct 14, 2019 10:10
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Seems like a better start so far. I didn't know about that way into the lighthouse, I'll have to remember that. I just run into appallingly bad luck on Interloper in the first couple of days and always get slammed with blizzard after blizzard, so I either daren't go anywhere for fear of getting lost (depending on which map I spawned on, I know some better than others) or my pathetic starter clothing gets shredded to the point where I start to freeze before I've found anything useful. Probably survivable but I generally wuss out at that point and start over on Stalker. Then again I have bad luck in this game generally, playing through this myself I'd have sprained both ankles Skyrim-climbing into the lighthouse after going through the ice trying to snag that toque. That kind of bad luck is fun in its way though and is also what would happen in real life if I was in this situation. Coastal Highway's my second favourite area of the game (favourite is Mystery Lake for sheer nostalgia, I started playing when that was the only region) and there's a lot of neat stuff here. Good luck. And don't worry about commentary, the game really speaks for itself most of the time and you're explaining things in the thread as well.
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Oct 14, 2019 11:07
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You'd think that you really need to be careful on Interloper but really because of the cold weather / blizzards / angry wildlife you're incentivised to just run around like an idiot trying to scavenge stuff for the first few days because trying to set up anything even vaguely approaching a routine just doesn't work - you need tools and clothing ASAP.
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Oct 14, 2019 21:29
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Do you need all the tools on you at the same time or can you leave them at a base you make? Also drat those are some slow-rear end skill bars
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Oct 14, 2019 21:42
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Thanks for your posts!Black Robe posted:Seems like a better start so far. I didn't know about that way into the lighthouse, I'll have to remember that. Much better start indeed. I had the same experience with loper when I first tried it, lucky to survive more days than fingers I've got on one hand. Eventually you find out what you can do and can't do. Sometimes you might even run naked into a blizzard if you really want to get to that next location. The biggest help here is map knowledge. You can cop some condition loss from a blizzard if you know you're going somewhere with safety. Sprains seem to be much more common with the new system and having to bandage them now, while smart from a balancing aspect in my opinion, is also horribly punishing, as I found out last run when I had no bandages. I haven't copped a sprain this run and suddenly I've got like 6-8 bandages! If it helps I've never sprained my ankle doing that little goat up to the lighthouse. I also love CH, it was the 2nd zone I really went to after ML, so I will always feel similarly about ML (when I played this back in EA I found the game pretty much impossible to live though I loved the atmosphere so much, died in Pleasant Valley a few times, and Mystery Lake a whole lot). I still remember I arrived in CH during the night, and slowly climbed down to the highway catching the sun rising over the ocean was quite pleasant. Learning how dangerous the wolves can be around Quonset garage was not so pleasant however. SSNeoman posted:Do you need all the tools on you at the same time or can you leave them at a base you make? You can generally leaves most of your tools at home and just take what you need for the occasion. If you're hunting you might just take a knife + bow. If you're looking for saplings you can take your axe or hacksaw, if you're crafting you need the heavy hammer. If you're going somewhere you haven't been it's useful to bring a pry bar to open locked containers and occasionally doors. You will generally keep your knife or axe on you depending on which weapon you favour in a fight. As I understand it, the knife is lethal to wolves but you risk more condition damage over the axe. I think the heavy hammer does better than both but it is also quite heavy and doesn't kill your would be predator. RabidWeasel posted:You'd think that you really need to be careful on Interloper but really because of the cold weather / blizzards / angry wildlife you're incentivised to just run around like an idiot trying to scavenge stuff for the first few days because trying to set up anything even vaguely approaching a routine just doesn't work - you need tools and clothing ASAP. It's quite fun running around like a mad man trying to accomplish several goals at once and having to decide on the fly. Interloper pushes you to stay on the move so much more than the other modes, it's one of the things I really like about it, even if it might be contrary to what seems reasonable!
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Oct 15, 2019 01:43
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Day 3 Good morning Canada. It’s early, so I repair my socks, undies, cotton toque, and jeans which fails three times right around the same progress. Ripped jeans are fashionable I guess there was some hesitation to truly repair them. Regardless, a blizzard rolls in as I finish so I continue my research of M. Hunter’s wilderness kitchen. Finishing that book brings me close to halfway to level 2 cooking. One short nap later and the blizzard continues. I head downstairs and make sure I didn’t miss any loot. It’s getting close to the end of the day so I try not to engage in any activity that would consume hours while I hope the blizzard dies down. A few curtains later and the blizzard is gone. I eat a horseload of salty crackers and sip some toilet water. Outside we go, crouched at first, no wolf so we sprint the hell out of the township and onto the open ice. I want to hit all the fishing huts if possible, the fishing cabins as well as a tool can spawn there. It’s quite warm out for a change which means I can take it easy on the sprinting, though I choose not to as it’s late and I may as well burn the energy so I can sleep tonight. First fishing hut has a couple of newspapers, good for tinder, too blurry to enjoy. I wish I could hoard old newspapers about bear island’s internal affairs and probably a lot of moaning about the mainland taking all their whale sardines, but alas I have poor eyesight. I hit up the logging camp as my next stop. I’m surprised to see the container and a cabin is there, however the cabin is boarded up which means thou shalt not enter. We will snap a rabbit’s neck, loot everything not nailed down by boards, tear the guts out of an animal bare handed, drink from toilets, but a few planks on a door is not to be trifled with. The container is about as empty as you’d expect for interloper. I head for the next lootable locale. I take a detour across the ice to hit a fishing hut. These things are often better stocked than a lot of the interiors around the island so it is worth visiting them when you get the chance. I find a whetstone, a piece of cloth. Not bad for what amounts to an Australian outback toilet sized shack. I stop by a dead guy mainly for the feathers (as mentioned we need feathers for the fletching on our arrows). Another fishing hut prior to our hopeful tool spawn brings another piece of cloth.. Maye it’s just the ML huts that have more loot than you’d expect. Another empty corpse and a feather later, ominous music swells as we approach the fishing camp. I beeline toward the workbench looking for tools, instead there’s a bit of scrap metal and a bag of jerky. I head inside the cabins and find a soda, painkillers, can o peaches, running shoes (upgrade over my dress shoes!), sewing kit, and a fish plaque. That’s it for the fishing camp, so we head back out to the ice to get another fishing hut on our way to Jackrabbit’s island and misanthropes to complete the days loot cycle. We find nothing in the next fishing hut, but some socks have washed up on the beach (a 2nd pair!). We pass by a perfectly good sapling I click on it just in case I am game to tear it from the ground with our hands or just in case I accidentally looted a hacksaw without noticing at some point. I then find the fleece gloves I thought I found yesterday in my post, I knew I had them and somehow thought I’d found them prior to now but I was quite wrong, no idea what that was I looted all those minutes ago. Our bits are now covered for real this time. This is why we click on saplings just in case. My puny monkey brain may be exaggerating the poor terms of the deal I have struck with life and we might actually have items we don’t think we do. Jackrabbit’s contains lots of empty cabinets, can of beans, granola bar, a toilet for sipping, and a bandage. It’s pretty dark inside so I think I may have missed something, I decide to mend my gloves and socks with the rest of the day and harvest my old shoes, I sleep here so I can potentially find anything I missed in the dark during the day. Day 4 Do some more inventory management, read a book, eat some dog food. Usual morning when you wake up at sunrise. I do another pass in slightly better light, don’t see anything, time to finish up in CH. Sunrise from jackrabbit’s:  You might not be able to see it, but my character is looking up into the hills just right of the crows, there’s a watchtower. At this point I am considering heading up there, there’s a cave that can take us to Pleasant Valley. It might also have some tools. Whether or not we go that way or head to ML to not die to wolves this time, remains to be seen. Firstly, I head down to the crows and grab the feathers. I then head to Misanthropes Inside there is drinking water, a sparsely populated kitchen, and upstairs there is a granola bar under a coach. I eat the granola bar, drink from my supply of CH’s residents’ toilets and take a nap. It’s windy and snowy outside, a bear, and a wolf stopping me from hitting one of the last of the fishing huts and taking the easy path to the watchtower, I decide I’ll head toward ML instead. One more fishing hut can be looted on the way, I find a small arms handbook (fuel for fire). Then it’s back toward the logging camp to warm up before I climb into the hills for a couple of other pit stops on the way to ML. I take a quick nap at the container at logging camp, wake up to some good news. Blizzards have returned to CH. I do some reading about sewing, another nap. With more good news this time, I’m well fed! I can now carry an extra 5KGs of junk before being encumbered. The blizzard has also calmed to a light snow. Not quite as warm as yesterday but warm enough to not need to worry about freezing. I follow a path up the hill toward ML, a short walk later I find a cabin it contains: a stale chocolate bar. Good enough for keeping me fed until I can loot some cat tails near the top of this hill. I hurl a rock at a rabbit just for luck. I miss, retrieve my lucky stone and continue my ascent.  Another short walk and we see a container and a wolf climbing a steep hill. I head inside the container to give the wolf some time to leave.  In the container is nothing. I return to my walk. Making sure to veer around the wolf as much as possible. I head off the road for now to gather the aforementioned cattails along a frozen river, with conveniently placed cabin to spend a night. I will spend one more night here in CH gathering these and throwing rocks at rabbits. The second bunny gives me a bit of a hard time. Sneaky little bugger: https://youtu.be/eYdXwewMwQI?t=6079 I start the first fire I’ve had in a while and notice I’ve got close to 50 sticks. Don’t have to worry about fuel for fires for a while. I eat rabbit for tea with a side of cattails and get a well-earned sleep. Janitor Ludwich IV fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 01:44
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Day 5 Time to finally get out of CH. I’ve spent a while here. First, I do my morning tradition of mending clothes and napping until the sun has arisen. There’s one more container on the way out we can stop at for another nap or to warm up if required so I don’t wait too long. I stop for a few more cattails along the way, but other than that not much to report. I don’t see the wolf who was stalking the road yesterday, good thing that. I do hear him out there somewhere though. We’re freezing when we get to the last container at the Train Unloading area, so I stay long enough to get another nap in. Nothing to loot in this one either. I eat some more cattails and take a 2 hour nap. Weather is not ideal, in fact it’s a blizzard, so I have a quick look around the train unloading for anything loot worthy, but quickly head back inside to read more on mending. I finish the book and take another nap, there goes 5 hours of the day. It’s late afternoon when I wake and the blizzard continues, I break down an old crate for 15 minutes and the blizzard stops. Moderate snow, moderate wind, good enough to go. I find another dead guy as I leave, grab the feathers and head for the transition to ML. It’s warm if I am sheltered from the wind and luckily, it’s blowing from my right, where there is a bunch of hills shading me from the wind. Convenient. Often the game prefers to put the wind directly in your face to slow you down as much as possible. I head through a train tunnel loading screen which brings us to the Ravine. This is quite a cool area.  You might see to my right in this shot that there’s a busted bit of the tracks, the first time through here is quite nerve wracking. I’m yet to fall but I’m sure that will happen someday when I get cocky enough to try sprinting across it, but today we take it easy: https://youtu.be/eYdXwewMwQI?t=7191 The sky starts to clear:  Bringing with it some nice blues and greens:   The thing about this zone is that it has no wolves. There’s a rope climb down into the ravine proper. You can live here in a cave for a while hunting deer quite peacefully. I’d like to do that someday. Today we are just passing through; with a short detour to loot a broken bunch of train freighters. Inside we find close to a litre of lantern oil, and finally the heavy hammer:  Happy days! Useful for fending off a wolf while we have no bow, and most importantly lets us craft those arrowheads, an improvised hatchet and an improvised knife. It won’t be long till we can get revenge on the wildlife for our fallen comrades. I loot some more cattails on the way to ML as strong winds blow from my rear. I hope there’s no wolf waiting for me on the other side of the loading screen. I’ve died here before, as I approached the first cabin, a wolf emerged from right around the corner and cut me down. Thankfully not tonight. I turn on my lantern for the first time and search the containers just near the transition to and from the Ravine. I also loot the safe and a few of the rooms in Carter Hydro Dam as I’m not all that tired just yet. I find $20 in the safe. Thanks. The dam is kinda hard to see at night but here’s the silhouette of the building:  I also find the public restrooms are still full of water, here’s a screenshot:  No cistern, you can rest assured we drink directly from the bowl to ensure our immune system is operating at peak performance as we drink from the waste of potentially dozens of employees. Judging by the general state of the dam it’s hard to imagine they kept many, if any, cleaners on retainer. After we finish looting, my character smacks her chops to signal her anticipation of our next drink. We loot some more empty drawers, filing cabinets, and head back out to the containers to sleep for the night as our lamp runs out of fuel. I refuel it with the oil from the Ravine before sleeping. Probably should have made a torch first. Oh well. Next time. Day 6 I wake up way too early due to our lack of sprinting yesterday and blindly stumble around the container looking for things to break apart to tire myself out. Find a crate to turn into reclaimed wood. Try to read. It’s too dark. Look over my crafting menu, there’s nothing I need. I’m well stocked on tinder and bandages, which is about all I can craft right now. I break down one of my boxes of simple tools. This takes around an hour. I take a nap; the sun has begun to rise. I head outside and loot some cattails around the dam, then back to the container for another nap. Daylight has arrived which means I should be able to loot the rest of Carter Hydro’s interior without light. This is quite a time-consuming process. There’s a lot of things to search here. Rather than a long list of goods let’s just celebrate the fact that I find a hacksaw near the end of my search, I also pick up a metal pot for boiling up to 2 litres of water in one go. I’m very happy for the hacksaw, I never doubted that I’d find a pot but still it’s nice to have one. We’ll go over my incredibly heavy backpack and its contents soon. I am barely walking at this point. Eventually I find my way back outside and into the light, with the intention to head down the river toward where Snow Citizen 1 was sadly mauled to death by wolf. On day 6 as well. I hope this isn’t a sign. It’s windy as I consider harvesting a deer outside the dam. Too cold and windy for that. I opt to just follow the river looting every cattail I see. This leads to my first wolf encounter for ML. It’s quite a dangerous one with my pack bloated and my eyes full of lust for cattails. https://youtu.be/eYdXwewMwQI?t=10220 I consider playing it safe and scaring it with fire when I hear its barks. Fortunately, it finds a rabbit instead of me. I begin to skirt around but my lust consumes me, and I spend way too long looting cattails. Next thing I know we’re engaged in a high-speed pursuit as I slowly shamble down the frozen river with wolfy gaining on me with a lustre. I keep my torch out ready to start a fire at a moment’s notice. I continue my greedy ways, because really, by the time it’s sprinting at me, it will be too late. I see a deer up ahead; this starts to really panic me. If it goes for the deer, it’s likely it will start sprinting sooner and it might just stop and eat me instead when it catches up to me. Still I walk. I can’t sprint. I’m too fat. Wolf still gaining on me I try to keep the deer moving away from us, and veer up the nearest hill I can find just in case I can mountain goat out of this. Right as I begin the climb the wolf begins lets out a gnarly bark and I know its time to prepare my hammer arm or get a fire going asap. I slowly begin to light my torch and, I had never noticed this until now, just how long it takes to light the drat thing. I am certain I could never place a fire before it gets me at this point, and I am correct. Fortunately, I fall off a ledge and it growls at me, annoyed. I stupidly don’t light a fire as soon as I fall it sounds like the wolf isn’t chasing anymore, then the wolf re-paths towards me I begin lighting the fire. Thankfully I don’t fail right before it gets close to me and it scares it away. I fail lighting it right at the end of the progress bar, while hearing a deer felled behind me. Another wolf consuming it, I consider going for it but, yet another wolf approaches, and I haul my sorry fat rear end toward the nearest shelter. It’s further than I had anticipated so I’m still not out of the woods here. Or off the frozen lake in this case. I manage to get inside the fishing hut I died inside last time, but this time I’ve not been savaged by a wolf. I manage to get back out without the wolf noticing and continue my greedy ways, looting the fishing cabins/holiday cabins lining the lake, and the huts thereupon. I learn nothing from this close brush with teeth. I do lighten my backpack in one of the lodges; enough to be able to sprint, but I’m still encumbered. At least I’ve got close to 60 cattails. Not a bad haul. I fill my stomach for the first time since I woke up on day 1. A treat for my terrible decision making. I drop a bunch of crap (45 cattail heads, we eat the stalks, heads are used as tinder, a couple of books on small arms weapons) and head back out to loot. I think I would just quit this LP if I died in ML again. I hope I’m not speaking too soon saying this. Around the lake we go looting cat tails out of convenience rather than greed, stopping by all the cabins. We then head back onto the ice and toward the wolves to loot the huts they’re hanging out around. This leads to a tense few moments where I’m not sure if they’ll run into them when there’s no door to close. Thankfully they do not. Though it is mildly terrifying on a few occasions: https://youtu.be/eYdXwewMwQI?t=11299 Finally we amble over to the camp office, wolf in slow pursuit, stalking mode. There’s enough distance between us and just enough speed to my sprint that we get there without further scares. Here we find another key piece of loot: The mag lens! Fire without matches is always good. We spend the night here at camp office and I’m ready to head to trappers homestead to hit the safe, then off to forge we go in Forlorn Muskegg (‘FM’). Here’s me feeling triumphant in the camp office:  Before we proceed to FM, I will spend some time going over our backpack and a few notes I may have not posted up to this point. Next post is a sundry post and you can be glad I am wasting your time. Janitor Ludwich IV fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 01:46
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Those fishing huts seem like way more trouble than they're worth, especially with the wolves around.
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Oct 15, 2019 02:35
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I'm always disappointed when I or anyone I'm watching isn't attacked by a wolf inside the dam. Fluffy's just a part of life, it's how things are meant to be and should never change. Camp office is usually my main base, it's central to pretty much everywhere in ML and has lots of space to store things. I'm also guilty of the 'grab literally everything in one trip and then stumble along at the speed of treacle' method.
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Oct 15, 2019 05:32
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SSNeoman posted:Those fishing huts seem like way more trouble than they're worth, especially with the wolves around. Correct. However, I see ML and I loot. Black Robe posted:I'm always disappointed when I or anyone I'm watching isn't attacked by a wolf inside the dam. Fluffy's just a part of life, it's how things are meant to be and should never change. It was very sad seeing fluffy ganked in story mode, top 10 wildlife betrayals of all time. I was carrying over 15KGs worth of fire starting related items at one point there! Deciding what to take with you is a never-ending challenge.
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Oct 16, 2019 01:50
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Day 7 Location: Camp Office Mission Parameters: Get to FM, forge tools Risks: Freezing, death by wolf, death by bear. You have no choice but to accept this mission. I dump a bunch of stuff at Camp Office. We’ll go over just what I had at the bottom of this post. I’ve decided I will do some weekly status update in terms of gear. Things are likely to start changing regarding how often we want to do a daily log of activities. If I’m successful in this mission I’m going to start spending a lot of time at a crafting table and days will disappear without much happening. Either way, first stop is Trapper’s Homestead to loot the safe, and grab some saplings around the area before we head to FM. That way we won’t get back to ML and must wait around 5-6 days for saplings to cure. There’s likely to be a wait, of a day or two but that’s a much better proposition. We find 2 Maple saplings on the way over to Trapper’s. That’s bows sorted for a while.  Here we are then. We drop the maple, find a heavy hammer on the table. Might come in handy if I go back to DP to leave it there. The safe contains our 2nd pry bar and a thin wool sweater, an upgrade over our hoodies at least. I head back outside and stop by Unnamed Pond. Bear is there again:  No additional cattails from here. Do find a firestriker though in the hunter’s blind though. Score!  Over the hills and far away we go. Back to Cabin, unnamed Cabin. Here we find our first moose of the LP.  If he hangs around long enough, I’ll happily turn him into a pouch for an additional +5KG carrying capacity, and a huge amount of extremely edible meat and a pile of guts for crafting. For now, we loot the cabin, unnamed hero is dead inside once again, a friend outside on the ground. Maybe the moose got them. Off to the Clearcut next. We get our first sprain but it’s worth it, a cluster of Birch saplings awaits us at Clearcut.  I consider heading up to the destroyed watchtower. A wolf convinces me not to, then almost convinces me to steal his meal when he goes for a deer instead.   As delicious as the venison would be, and as good as it would feel to steal food from a wolf, I choose to stay the course and stick to getting a bow before messing with the wolves too much. On the way back we sprain our other wrist and an ankle. It’s almost as if the game reads my let’s play and heard that I hadn’t had a sprain for almost a full week and now I’m being punished. I hobble back to Trapper’s, drop my saplings and go to sleep for 4 hours to cure all the sprains. I then head outside to hunt some wabbit. I walk outside and find this:   A rabbit gets stoned quietly out the back of trappers, can’t find his friend though. No matter, I go start a fire by the deer in the shed at trappers and get to work harvesting its carcass. I’m careful to drop all the smelly bits on the ground as I work removing meat, guts and hide piece by piece. Attracting wolves here during an aurora would be bad. I eat the venison and bring the guts + hide back to trapper’s for curing. I also bring a torch to start another fire inside Trapper’s to take care of the stoned rabbit from earlier. I eat the rabbit, some cattails and call it a week. Week 1 Status Update Have you ever found yourself wondering: what has this idiot been carrying around with him that has caused him to be out moseyed by stalking predators? Why not just put that stuff down and not die, you idiot? Well I did get rid of a bunch before getting back to the camp office so I could sprint but there was still a lot. Here’s how we stood before going to Trapper’s homestead.  We shouldn’t be carrying this quantity of books, or coal, maybe one reader and one burner + about 5 coal would be more than enough. I dump a lot of the books at Camp office, but I drag the coal with me. As well as all of the firewood  A lot of meds, I’ll keep a bottle of antiseptic, antibiotics, painkillers and 3 bandages. The blue box is water purifiers which are situational in use and not going to be that useful to us right now. It essentially saves you an hour of fire time, so it is more efficient in weight than lugging an extra coal: A piece of coal weighs .3 KG, that’s slightly more than 4 water purifiers, a piece of coal burns for an hour. Generally, you can melt 2 litres of snow per cooking slot per hour, then a further hour to boil the snow clean. As such it would require 2 pieces of coal to clean 2 litres of water, a weight of 600 grams. Alternatively, you could carry 425 grams of bag space for the same amount of water by carrying 2 purifiers and one piece of coal. Coal is the best to illustrate this as it has the best burning time to weight ratio. Although, coal requires burning wood before it can be used; purifiers fare even better against other fuel types. However, this all assumes you are only starting fires for the purposes of boiling water. We are not. In the camp office they stay for now. On lower difficulties I’d say purifiers are even less useful as you can probably just grab the wood as you want to use it. Harvesting the sticks on interloper is a valid option but mileage may vary depending on location. Oh we also want to keep the syringe looking thing on us. That stim can be an absolute life saver. It immediately restores 10% condition and gives you infinite sprint for a considerable amount of time. If you have them, keep one around for an emergency.  These are our clothes and we will continue to wear these.  This is our food and we will need to eat.  You can see some books show up here again. These are the ones we have not read. Bring one sewing kit, hacksaw, bedroll, hammer, lantern and a book. Shouldn’t need anything else. I keep my lucky rock anyway.  Keep a couple of cloth, all our scrap metal, and bandages and reclaimed wood already dealt with. Everything else should be ok to leave behind. Crows feathers is the only one I doubt periodically. It might have been convenient to have them on hand. Oh well. We also have the firestriker we picked up at the unnamed pond now. I will keep that in my backpack. Congratulations if you made it this far. Janitor Ludwich IV fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Oct 16, 2019 |
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Oct 16, 2019 01:52
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I tend to obsessively build up perfect caches in one base per region - a ton of firewood, water, a few canned goods, some of each type of medical supply, some herbal tea, spare cloth and scrap, some cured hide/gut/saplings, tools if I have spares. Keep all my coal in piles at the forges, with hammers if I have spares. Extra bedrolls if I play long enough to kill enough bears. That sort of thing. The theory is that I'll be able to travel light later on since I'll always have a home nearby equipped with everything I need. Then I never end up going back to most of them until it's too late and I've run out of stuff and generally die to a wolf trying to get back to the cache I forgot about. I'm good at this game.  Speaking of caches, are you going to try and find the bunker in ML before moving on? I usually check two or three places then lose patience. It probably isn't worth looking for on interloper anyway, I imagine it would be very disappointing - I know the stuff on Timberwolf is nerfed so presumably so are the caches.
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Oct 16, 2019 09:02
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Black Robe posted:I tend to obsessively build up perfect caches in one base per region - a ton of firewood, water, a few canned goods, some of each type of medical supply, some herbal tea, spare cloth and scrap, some cured hide/gut/saplings, tools if I have spares. Keep all my coal in piles at the forges, with hammers if I have spares. Extra bedrolls if I play long enough to kill enough bears. That sort of thing. The theory is that I'll be able to travel light later on since I'll always have a home nearby equipped with everything I need. Did they nerf timberwolf further? It's not as amazing on interloper for sure, but definitely a worthwhile place to hit. I leave it till last because as far as I know stuff in those containers doesn't decay. I'm hoping to do the Cartographer achievement during the 500 day run so I should hopefully run into the hidden bunker while mapping, I've never actually found it before though. By then it'll probably be full of ruined goods or empty if ruined stuff despawns when not discovered for a period of time. I like the premise of keeping supplies across the island to alleviate weight concerns. I haven't done much of that, I prefer to centralize in ML due to its centrality. I leave a lot of water around in places if I boil too much and I will leave a lot of coal at FM forge, probably. I have way too much to need it all for the small amount of scrap metal I have at this point. I think I'll leave the hammer at ML though because if I'm going to FM to forge I'm probably going through ML! I might take the 2nd hammer to Pleasant Valley when I visit and leave it there in case I want to go forge in DP after leaving Timberwolf or Pleasant Valley. Assuming I'm not dead.
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Oct 16, 2019 10:15
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This (and the presumably upcoming halloween stuff) got me to reinstall TLD, I had a grand time bumbling around Hushed River Valley which I had not even heard of previously. I'm only on Voyageur so having no plan worked out in large part due to emulating your sticks-and-cattails diligence and also finding a loving gun immediately, both of which allowed my survivorman to wander in circles for a week before I found my way out. I celebrated my escape by shooting a deer and then accidentally eating the raw meat, getting food poisoning instantly. Now in Milton with my needs met and half health (I thought fighting a wolf on the bridge into town would be fun) what exactly is the right way to do downtime in this game? Do you read books when food is cooking, when you have too much smelly meat to haul around, what? Also, should I worry about the wolf whimpering and fleeing in circles around this house snapping out of it one day and jumping me?
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Oct 17, 2019 02:10
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tomanton posted:This (and the presumably upcoming halloween stuff) got me to reinstall TLD, I had a grand time bumbling around Hushed River Valley which I had not even heard of previously. Hopefully more people come back to TLD for episode 3 coming shortly as well. Though I'm looking forward to the survival mode update they're aiming on releasing in December. Welcome back. My advice for the wolf firstly, be prepared to fight it one day. Fear is temporary, it might get scared of you again but sooner or later it will be hungry enough to go on the offensive. Easier to kill it when you have a decoy and it isn't feared, but it shouldn't attack you if you're trying to shoot it while it's running around scared, unless you have poor luck. As far as downtime there's a range of activities I participate in depending on my priorities. I usually aim to keep my clothes mended first (once a piece drops below roughly 75% I mend). Reading is always beneficial, sharpening tools when you need to. I like to harvest animals in bits, so I'll cook while I'm working on the rest of the carcass which has the advantage of keeping you warm while you do it. Works particularly well with quartering so you can build your fire somewhere with good wind protection. In regards to wind protection, the corpse of the animal on the ground can also protect from wind, keep that in mind when placing fires. The fire should also protect you from wolves being attracted to your scent but bears can be a problem, so I'll minimise my scent as much as I reasonably can. Books are a good option for cooking, most things will cook in around an hour then you have some extra time before it burns (I'm not sure exactly how much but it's a decent amount 30+ mins). Always check the cooking time after you place the food before engaging in reading though. You can also try to kill something else while you're cooking and end up spending days dealing with the aftermath of your murder spree.
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Oct 17, 2019 06:00
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One good thing to do if you have a bunch of downtime, it's sunny outside and if you have a magnifying glass is to simply spam fires so you can level firestarting to level 3, once you are level 3 you don't need any tinder for your fires anymore which is really nice, having higher level for firestarting is also good so you don't waste as many matches/uses of a firestarter, especially in higher levels of difficulty where each match could mean life or death.
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Oct 17, 2019 06:48
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Koorisch posted:One good thing to do if you have a bunch of downtime, it's sunny outside and if you have a magnifying glass is to simply spam fires so you can level firestarting to level 3, once you are level 3 you don't need any tinder for your fires anymore which is really nice, having higher level for firestarting is also good so you don't waste as many matches/uses of a firestarter, especially in higher levels of difficulty where each match could mean life or death. Good way to spam your way to the light 1000 fires feat too! I don't know if I will participate in such behaviour during this run though. I once did the harvest and cook strips of .1 KG meat to get cooking to the point where you can eat wolves parasite free, and I didn't find that the most enjoyable use of my time.
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Oct 19, 2019 03:39
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Day 8 It’s finally time to make the forge trip. Which of course means there’s a blizzard outside. Back inside we go. It’s finally time to destroy some furniture. Hours later and some additional reclaimed wood it’s late afternoon. Sunset has just begun, I don’t want to delay this trip any longer so I go anyway, knowing that I could be travelling in the dark very soon. It shouldn’t be a problem. I have plenty of fire fuel if I need to sleep in a derailed train cart or a cave. It’s a relatively short journey to FM from Trapper’s. I collect some sticks, monitor my gauges. Do some looting just outside the tunnel to FM. A pry bar will come in handy for some additional scrap metal at the forge. Into the tunnel we go. A short loading screen later and we’re in FM.  As you can see the sun and the sun isn’t going to be around for much longer. This combined with the limited visibility from the weather can make navigation a little awkward. We should be fine regardless, as we have plenty of firewood, drink and food as insurance against the body and the elements. The only wildcard is the wildlife. I continue to pick cattails that are on my path, not straying too far due to time constraints. Our first stop is a derailed train.  Easy to navigate to, simply follow the tracks. We’re in luck  A few pieces of scrap metal are scattered around the train. Inside a cart is an upgrade on my non-mackinaw coat which was formerly a windbreaker and is now a light shell, plus some more coal. I decide to press on toward Spence’s homestead which contains the forge.  It’s somewhere out there. As you may know a key challenge in FM is the vast amount of open ice; much of which can mean a short swim if you aren’t careful. A dip in the water is almost a guaranteed case of hypothermia. Stick to solid ground, tread lightly o n the ice and if you must cross thin ice, sprint and cross your fingers you make it across. On the way to Spence’s there’s opportunity to grab more cattails. In doing so in combination with the poor visibility I veer off course. We end up somewhere to the left of our heading. Or East based on my arbitrary compass where FM is south west of ML’s trapper’s homestead. At this point I opt to stick heading south along the edge of the region rather than backtrack; despite knowing full well the area tends to harbour wolves. It isn’t long before I’m being stalked. I can barely see anything with the snow and the dark. I try to put some distance between me and the origin of the sounds. I keep heading south, I start climbing a hill which more complications to my vision, but there’s a cave up ahead. I sprint inside as a 2nd wolf picks up my trail. I immediately start a fire inside the cave. Attem pt 1 fails. Attempt 2 scares them off and lights successfully. The challenge now is getting out of here somehow. I find an additional 4 or so pieces of coal in the cave, bringing my total to 26. At least I can keep the fire burning all night if needed without come check on me but are scared off by the fire when they get too close. I eat and drink to the baying of wolves. I decide to sleep for 3 hours by the fire. Upon awakening I grab a torch and head outside. I’m blocked by one of the wolves, so I head back inside and refuel the fire for another sleep. 2 more hours. I take a new torch and try again. This time I’m greeted by this:  Guess I’m not going anywhere. I dump the remainder of my reclaimed wood and coal onto the fire and just ensure that these wolves are still scared of fire before sleeping again. https://youtu.be/ZwL5zUo25Uc?t=3631 Spooky. Escape plan re-commences in the morning. Day 9 I spent most of the early morning hours doing research and boiling water waiting for the sun. I manage to complete my book on archery, then head back outside the cave. This time I’m lucky enough that the wolves aren’t blocking my exit. They still pursue me, but I can sprint toward my destination. I relax a little as I think I’m safe and home free at this point. It isn’t till I get close to Spence’s till I find out there’s more obstacles to navigate. I make a short stop along the way in another cave, but this one is completely empty. A short walk later and finally Spence’s begins to come into view with some ruined outskirts:  As we approach there’s a couple of dead deer, and a wolf hiding around them. The pursuit to the farmstead begins. Unfortunately, at this point real life interrupts and I must take a pause break. I unpause to resume the chase. Suddenly I’ve walked directly into a wolf who was obscured by a hill previously. Thankfully there’s a felled tree creating an obstacle for me to use to my advantage. I quickly move by it and drop a fire. It’s very, very close, but I manage to get the fire down just moments before it pounces, and its paws come into view on my screen as I’m starting the fire. This all happens about 20 meters from the homestead. https://youtu.be/wf25BLB1Hfw?t=314 Finally I have arrived and without a scratch on me! I find matches, another 5 or so pieces of coal to add to my 25. Scrap metal, work gloves, a crow feather, lantern fuel, additional timber, a book on carcass harvesting, and a bandage. I take a nap till the weather warms a bit and explore around the exterior of the farm a bit. I notice that my recording has some weird artifacting issues going on now that I’m watching it, that’s unfortunate. Either way, I stop by a ruined shack which has retained a set of draws, more coal and some timber. I find a dress shirt and socks in the draws. After I’m done exploring, I head back and break open some boxes to find the customary hidden dog food plus additional wood for the fire. I crack open the safe hidden behind a couple of boxes. This time I find... More cash and a pair of jeans. I finish harvesting the rest of the boxes and a metal shelf. It’s now night and time to get the forge going. I light the forge and dump 12 hours’ worth of timber and go to sleep (12 hrs of fuel is the max you can stuff a fire with).
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Oct 19, 2019 03:40
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Day 10 Forging begins after I get the forge up to 150c with the use of coal. We have 19 scrap metal to work with. I start with a knife, then the hatchet, and then the rest is turned into arrowheads over the next dozen hours. I’m close to running out of food at this point, so I plan to harvest more cattails on the way back to ML to get working on the bow. Day 10 stretches into the early morning hours until I’ve crafted all my arrowheads. I wind up with 22 arrowheads (11 hours of crafting + 11 scrap metal), the hatchet and the knife. Day 11 The trip back to Mystery Lake goes relatively well. I gather cattails, harvest a deer while warming up by the fire, which I start with the mag lens. I even get the guns and hide to bring back to ML. I’ll drop one of the guts as a decoy if the wolves get too close. They immediately come while I’m harvesting but the fire keeps them away. I pull a torch and circle around to a safer path hoping to sneak by them before they pursue me again. I manage to continue grabbing cattails without incident. It’s not long before the wolves find me, and I risk it across some thin ice: https://youtu.be/d17Y6u9mZ7w?t=497 I then continue harvesting cattails, as I guess the wolf is smart enough not to cross the thin ice. At least it doesn’t seem to pursue beyond that. I get back to the train tracks near the derailed carts without further incident but plenty of cattails gathered. A wolf catches up with me as I stop by a lake for a few more cattails before leaving for ML.  I leave at this point. The trip back to Trapper’s goes uneventfully. I gather plenty of sticks, sprain a wrist and loot a dead guy with nothing on him. I get back to trapper’s and find deer hanging about, I think I’ll be eating these soon. I head inside and find my saplings haven’t quite cured. I do a bunch of misc with my inventory, repairing clothes, harvesting unneeded clothing, by this time my birch saplings are cured, and I create the first of my arrows. Night falls and with it another aurora. If I were at Camp Office I could continue crafting arrows with this aurora, but unfortunately Trapper’s has no lights on the interior. During aurora’s electricity sort-of functions. Light’s flicker, radio’s play classical and laptops leave moody messages. With no potential to accomplish anything. I sleep. Day 12 My maples are around 80% cured so I still have some time to pass before I can craft my bow. I do more harvesting of old clothes, hunt rabbits, break down furniture, cook and eat rabbits and call it another day. Janitor Ludwich IV fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Oct 19, 2019 |
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Oct 19, 2019 03:41
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Day 13 The dark stops me from doing much, waking up too early can be a real pain. I try to do some night reading outside, but hypothermia risk sets in before I can complete an hour. Back inside to screw around till sunrise, sleeping whenever possible. Maples now at 94%. This is a long morning in the dark. I take some painkillers for no reason; they don’t do anything for time dilation. Finally, the sun rises far enough to pierce the heavy fog with light. I return to crafting, making some fishing lines for the future and working on some more arrow shafts. I can’t make any more arrows as most of my feathers are at the Camp Office. I repair more clothes while waiting for the Maple’s to cure. I basically stare at them from 99% to 100% cured and it ticks over while I’m munching on cattails. Crafting of the bow begins. Some 7 hours later my bow is complete. I step outside to take pot shots at deer, instead I find this: https://youtu.be/d17Y6u9mZ7w?t=3588 We duke it out; it’s a messy and exploitative battle. I win despite what I consider a very poor performance. Practice with the bow is certainly required. Regardless, I set to work on harvesting the bugger by quartering him and dragging the sack fulls of meat up to trapper’s for further processing and refining. I drag his heavy hide inside to cure and soon turn into a moose hide satchel, with its additional 5kg carrying capacity it is a highly sought-after item. The harvesting takes a strange turn when a wolf shows up and steals a full bag of meat from me, then starts hunting deer. I don’t want him stealing my deer and my moose meat, so I take a shot at him and hit, though it isn’t a kill. He runs off into the wilderness and I claim the deer carcass as my own. https://youtu.be/d17Y6u9mZ7w?t=4261 I get back to work on cooking my moose and dragging its meat around while stopping for naps to ensure I’m not losing condition. Eventually I give it up for a proper rest in the early hours of Day 14. Day 14 I wake up in the afternoon to a blizzard. I work on harvesting the sacks of meat I hauled up to Trapper’s and leave them outside to be frozen. I briefly search for the wolf who still has my arrow, I think. Grab some firewood and head back down to get cooking. This goes on for the rest of the day/night. I get some reading done while cooking RE harvesting carcasses. Sunrises on Day 15. Day 15 I sleep the morning away and wake up in the afternoon. I head over to my deer carcass and grab some feathers plus the hide from the deer. I drop it off and Trapper’s. The exterior now, happily, looks like this:  I craft another arrow with the additional feathers I’ve acquired. Consider hunting deer but they scurry so I head to the camp office to retrieve some equipment instead. Maybe even get revenge on some old friends. I shoot one of my friends on the way over, but again I fail the shot and it runs off into the wilderness with my arrow. I loot some feathers and he comes sprinting passed yelping some nonsense. I take another shot but it lands in an electricity pole rather than in my sworn enemy. I continue onto the cabin due to the cold. https://youtu.be/d17Y6u9mZ7w?t=5879 I do some inventory management, sharpen my tools which have taken some wear with all the harvesting and crafting and that’s it for day 15. Day 16, I check my omniscient journal for information about wolves. Wolves killed: 1. That means one of them has dropped my arrow who knows where, the other should be dead somewhere between here and trappers meaning it should be easy enough to find, as they both headed into that general area last I saw them. Crows will help here, as for the other arrow. That is probably a loss at this point. Next time on Day 16. I haven’t decided yet, I’m just glad I finally caught the posting up to the playing.
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Oct 19, 2019 03:41
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Man that bow is a gamechanger. One moose is enough to solve your food problems for a long while
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Oct 19, 2019 07:53
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The first moose kill is always an amazing feeling. Seeing that amount of meat lined up is extremely satisfying. I started up a Pilgrim run just to wander around and scratch my itch a bit without having to concentrate too much. Started in ML, spawned by the Unnamed Pond. Immediately found a bow in the hunter's blind in the first minute or two. Uh, okay, game.
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Oct 19, 2019 08:14
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Do crows and feathers actually dynamically spawn when you have dead animals lying around, I always thought that they were fixed spawns based on the corpses which are created when you start a new game (I haven't played for like 2 years so maybe it changed at some point) Related, the well fed buff and ability to murder bunnies with rocks looks like it makes the early game considerably more tolerable and probably more than compensates fixing the "spend half the time starving" loophole. Though it does mean you have to spend even more time picking cat tails. The reworked cooking system and quartering are also big changes making it easier to generate lots of edible calories. RabidWeasel fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Oct 19, 2019 |
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Oct 19, 2019 15:14
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SSNeoman posted:Man that bow is a gamechanger. One moose is enough to solve your food problems for a long while Yep. Now it's a race against the dropping temperature conditions to turn those animals into clothes that will allow us to be outside for longer. Black Robe posted:The first moose kill is always an amazing feeling. Seeing that amount of meat lined up is extremely satisfying. On the other hand, the first moose stomping in interloper is a terrible feeling. Something like 90 days of broken ribs! You can probably find some arrows in Carter Hydro Dam as well, or pleasant valley at the barn. Otherwise check all the hunter's blind, they quite often have bows or arrows or bullets. RabidWeasel posted:Do crows and feathers actually dynamically spawn when you have dead animals lying around, I always thought that they were fixed spawns based on the corpses which are created when you start a new game (I haven't played for like 2 years so maybe it changed at some point) They do indeed spawn feathers at new corpses, I don't know how long it has been this way but it has been a long while. I really did not like the starve all day and eat before sleep to heal the loss from the days starving. So I have enjoyed this new method of survival a lot. This is the first time I've really played since they added the well fed buff and tuned starving damage. I'm digging it. Now that we have a bow and fishing lines, the need to pick cattails subsides as long as we're able to keep a steady flow of calories coming in. You could also avoid the reliance on cattails by stoning a rabbit early game and drying its guts for a fishing line, then you could use fishing instead. I'm going dead momentarily (as soon as I make my coffee) if anyone wants to drop in and watch me die and lose all this progress. 
Janitor Ludwich IV fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Oct 20, 2019 |
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Oct 20, 2019 01:16
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Day 16 I decide to play the game. For some reason I notice my framerate is poo poo while a wolf is chasing me. I try to fix it and the wolf charges while I'm screwing around. From 105% condition to dead. Thanks hinterland, thanks twitch. gently caress. https://youtu.be/MFAjCsTbDaA?t=365 Janitor Ludwich IV fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Oct 20, 2019 |
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Oct 20, 2019 02:46
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Aww, that sucks.
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Oct 20, 2019 05:13
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drat.
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Oct 20, 2019 06:53
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That seems weird to take that much damage in a single struggle even on Interloper. Though FYI as far as I'm aware the hatchet is the better weapon for fighting off wolves, unless that changed recently. I guess if the framerate was really bad it might have not recorded the mouseclicks properly?
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Oct 20, 2019 09:09
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