Returning player's thoughts...

[dwhiteside327]

First, let me say I love your game. It’s come quite far in the last 18 months (I think December 2014 or January 2015 is when I joined. Played it a bit then...and fell away...just recently picked it back up again...and you guys have been busy!)

Next, a bit of background; I am a 50 y/o man who’s camped (and lived on a farm, summers,) quite a bit. I raise and train Search & Rescue German Shepherd dogs (though my latest is retired.) I have also done Schutzhund training (a few months anyway...) So I understand the dogs pretty well, in most aspects of their lives. While I know that a GSD isn’t a wolf... it may be closer than you think (and they certainly aren’t very far separated, biomechanically.)

 

 

Things I would love to see in the game/Wishlist;

Rabbit/Wolf fur hat

Rabbit fur cloak/wrap

More Maple trees/saplings...(I mean, this _is_ Canada, hey?) A bow and a few arrows brings great peace of mind. (as well as adding more of a “fun” factor...) (Finally found one at day 63.) Still only have 1 arrowhead that I recycle...can we ever make these? Or do we just use what we find?)

Human bodyfat (allows me to overeat...and coast off the extra calories for a few days...)

More variability between individuals (and the sexes...) Randomly determined? (case in point...my wife is a 101# school teacher who couldn’t carry 66lbs of gear if her life depended on it...while I’m a 230# outdoorsy guy who could probably carry another like him for a quarter mile before I started really bitchin’.)

Less wear and tear on some items...a can opener wears out after opening a few (even a hundred?!) cans? I have one that’s probably 40 years old...and it still opens them well. A hatchet loses 2% of it’s useful life from chopping wood? Maybe it would make sense to have small catastrophes do this (Bad Luck! You’ve damaged your axe -4%!) Same thing with a whetstone and rifle cleaning kit...need oil? Melt some off that last buck kill you stole from the wolves! And I have whetstones that are 20+ years old and probably have sharpened knives 4-5 hundred times on them...and they still work great!
 

In a similar vein, food spoilage of large percentages when the entire outdoors is my deep freeze? (Granted, this may cause some difficulty with bears, or wolves...but hey, reality is what it is...right?)

Any opinions on adding coyotes/more wildlife?

 

 

Things I would do/try if I were in the situation of The Long Dark;

Wrap my bedroll (or extra jackets/longjohns) around my left arm (maybe supporting it with some sticks?) grab my sharpened knife...and go hunting wolves (btw, they do run in packs too...) I wouldn’t begin to mess with a pack of them (even a pack of 2!) but single wolves? Properly prepared...should be a nice dinner and one step closer to my coat...

Build myself a nice travois or sled (even a canoe or wheeled cart shouldn’t be beyond reason for a single, motivated individual...) even if it was only to move from one hideyhole to another...I know deer harvesting/hunting is made markedly easier by same...

Build myself a nice yurt (wheeled card with wooden sides and a Rabbit fur tent to top it...a simple candle inside it will warm it to the point of a sauna...) I might as well do something with these 3 or 5 hundred rabbit hides rotting in the corner...This would truly be luxury...I can load my gear up in it...and travel around exploring...it _is_ an exploration game, isn’t it?

Climb some of those gorgeous cedar pines to get a better survey of the surrounding countryside...

Become a better detector/predictor of the weather (not sure if this is something you can add easily, but it would certainly contribute to the flavor of the game...) Case in point I broke a toe a couple times when I was a kid...and even in my early 20s, it would ache when the weather was about to change...(maybe tmi, but you get the idea...)

Gather my (unfrozen!) water while I was fishing...btw, just curious, why does it take longer to “melt” snow...than it does to boil cold water? Melting snow means raising the temperature of the snow from 32ish degrees to 33ish degrees...boiling it means going from there (or even room temperature of 40-45) to 212 degrees F?

Sincerely,

a Loyal Fan