Tireless Menace and stalker

[Hotzn]

Being an avid stalker player and having tried it out a little bit, I cannot praise the Tireless Menace update highly enough. I have a feeling that the amount of loot and wildlife has been reduced heavily, and a number of exploits have been removed. Playing and surviving on stalker has become much more difficult compared to before the update. Very nice. I have the feeling a lot of other things have been rebalanced as well, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

First - wolves. The first thing that strikes the eye is that they don't run around their usual places. That alone is unsettling, I immediately become a little paranoid, asking myself whether they might be hiding behind the trees somewhere, watching me already. Secondly, they now seem to come in packs of two to four most of the time. I still need to scrutinize this more, but that is my current impression. And I like that, since a pack seems much more threatening than a single wolf. I'm all for packs. Third, I have not yet witnessed a situation where I would have been able to easily chase a deer into a wolf. In fact, I don't know yet whether this even still works. Aaand - wolves now react to my presence in a more complex and unpredictable manner. All these changes are great.

Then - brands. This may be the one big game-changer. Torches were overpowered (I remember having said this somewhere else, I may be repeating myself) the way they could just be pulled from a fire. The only problem I have with the brand is that is remains in the game when used up. As long as we don't have any dustbins, I advocate for it to just disappear from the inventory once it has burned out. A nice side-effect of the massive reduction of torches: kerosene has become a valuable resource again.

Further - item decay. This is something I didn't really realize while playing, but which I know from the update notes - matches and other items decay a lot slower than before. It's possible this also applies to raw meat in containers (not sure here). Anyway, this seems all good. The decay rates partly dated back to when TLD was like chess and there were only a handful of resources. With all the changes and the game expanding, they have become somewhat redundant. I also like that decay starts for all items in the game at the same time now...

[random calliope]

I've noticed similar changes.  Rather than the same amount of loot that's harder to get to, there seems to be less loot and you don't know what kind of gauntlets you are going to have to go through to find it.  Also storms.  Blizzards seem more frequent in stalker.

I have yet to see meat decay once it is cooked, if it is stored in a cabinet or refrigerator.  I haven't dropped any cooked food on the ground to see if it decays yet.  

[WinterWhite]

On 23/4/2016 at 1:46 AM, Hotzn said:

matches and other items decay a lot slower than before.

MATCHES NO LONGER DECAYS

 

[McGuffin]

20 minutes ago, WinterWhite said:

MATCHES NO LONGER DECAYS

 

I didnt check: so... Are new matches all at 100% so they can stack...?

 

[Dinhammer]

In my new game, they still have varying starting condition.