suggestion My gameplay and tweak suggestion based on Interloper run

[Killik]

Hello everyone.

So far I'm having fun playing on this difficulty. I spawned in TWM, not too far from the hut. I stayed for the night and in the morning decided to make run for Pleasant Valley. 

After two days spent there, I've decided to make it a nomad'ish play style and on day 4 I made my way to Coastal highway. As I'm far from being close to guys that make this game a walk in the park, I struggled a lot. But I made it work, somehow. Day 7, through Raven Falls to Mystery Lake. Made my base in Camp office and started working on furs. Day 22 was a nightmare. Dropped from 86% condition to 19 and was frustrated, because that wolf came out of nowhere. Should have payed more attention... Day 29, got my furrs. Hype

Time to leave, time to get tools! Day 32, managed to craft hatched and knife, also some arrow heads. Spent 2 more days in Desolation Point looting all the goodies and went back to Coastal Highway. 

Day 37, back in Timberwolf Mountain! Because why the heck not!  Only here I've finally decided to craft the bow! I thought it will be a nice place to live, hunt and have a good time! Boy I was wrong. Temp was low. No time to harvest wood. Was freezing all the time. Condition low, no food most of the time. But I kept going. Decided I want wolfskin coat, new goal! Time to put my bow to a good use. But first I used the wolfies to catch me some deer.

2 lovely head shots got me 2 pellets. 3rd and 4th was a struggle. Though I managed to aim well. shots didn't kill and I had to fight for my pellets. Day 50. Now with my pellets curing I had extra time to kill. So I was thinking... The Summit! Go get some dank loot! It will be fun!

Well... It wasn't. I brought 3k calories with me and some water. The temp man. Highest -24 (with clothes on) made this almost impossible. But I made it. I didn't care for food on the way there, found almost none anyway. Looted the cargo and ran back (it wasn't worth it, but I was happy with 2 extra boxes of matches). Morning of day 54, I'm back in the hut. No food, no water, condition at 10%. Ate some cats, started fire in the fishing thingy and ran to sleep for an hour in my hut. Came back, added some coal to the fire and spent about 12 hours fishing. It didn't go that well, but I managed to survive. 

The very next day, it was time to start to work on my coat. Grabbed all the thingies needed, let's do this. Then I noticed. It takes 50 hours to craft wolfskin coat, with a hatchet as the only possible tool! I'm so screwed!  I worked my way through it. Also found time to kill a deer. Day 59 was a letdown. Chance of cabin fever at 34%. I grabbed all the fuel I had left and moved to the fishing hut. Spent the night, even caught some fish, but not as many. I think it gave me just enough to not to be negative calories wise. But I was exhausted. Came back to the hut to get some real sleep. but in the morning, cabin fever chance back at nearly 30%. I had 5 hours of work left on my coat. Went out there, harvested 2 rabbits and came back. Finished my coat, got some more sleep.

Day 61, morning. I'm on my way, back in Pleasant Valley. 1000 calories worth of food, but condition at 85%. Blizzard, ofc it's a blizzard. Found shelter in Mystic River cave... 3 hours of daylight left, oh well.

 

I really am enjoying Interloper, I think it's fairly balanced. The only thing I want devs to change is the pace pellets decay. It's way too fast. My first wolf pellet, when finished curing, was at 30% condition. That's just silly. There's no real reason for that. Change it.

The second thing, sharpening. It takes longer to sharpen knife than a hatchet. I think it should be the other way around. 

 

Ok, that's my 2 cents. Time to get out there and fight to live for another day!

[mystifeid]

Drop the hatchet before crafting. You will then use knife instead and times will drop considerably eg wolf skin coat goes from 45hrs to 32.5

[Killik]

Oh well, I wish i knew. but it's all done now. 

There was no option to change tool. I think it could be considered a bug also if you can craft with a different tool, but game won't let you change it. 

[mystifeid]

A bug maybe. Maybe someone just forgot. Or maybe it's a trap for young players. Who knows.

Still watch out when you craft bows, arrow shafts or bearskin bedrolls.

[MueckE]

The rate of decay of hides and pelts is way to high, i totally agree. It is not a question of hard/easy, it is about a broken gameplay mechanic. When you look at the temperatures in Interloper, it almost makes no sense at all to craft clothes. I didn't craft anything. I have more than 10 hides and pelts stored. I thought i will craft clothes maybe later. Now i see their condition after a few days and i decide to not craft clothes at all. The benefit is just to low compared to the things you have to invest to get them. And after that, you also have to repair them all the time and so on. It is just not worth it - so basicly inbalanced and worthless.

[togg]

The hatchet crafting thing has to be a bug!

 

24 minutes ago, MueckE said:

The rate of decay of hides and pelts is way to high, i totally agree. It is not a question of hard/easy, it is about a broken gameplay mechanic. When you look at the temperatures in Interloper, it almost makes no sense at all to craft clothes. I didn't craft anything. I have more than 10 hides and pelts stored. I thought i will craft clothes maybe later. Now i see their condition after a few days and i decide to not craft clothes at all. The benefit is just to low compared to the things you have to invest to get them. And after that, you also have to repair them all the time and so on. It is just not worth it - so basicly inbalanced and worthless.

I guess I will only craft boots and pants just for the fun of it then... But it's sad. Makes no sense to stay with the boring clothes, I'd like the little warmth bonus anyway

Hope they'll fix it...

[Troxism]

I don't think clothes are 'useless' on interloper, at the very least means much quicker heating up when you get to a shelter = easier time to go out harvest for 1 hour, go in to warm up. And before day 50 you can do a lot of exploring on the warmer maps with -5 to -0 during the warm parts if you get the clothes done fast.

But yeah it's a bit odd that if you live on the colder maps past day 50 that it's actually a legitimate tradeoff if you even want to carry your 3kg coat and 2kg pants around with you, and it honestly shouldn't be a decision like that.

The problem is I'm not sure how to fix it. Raising temps isn't really a good solution because it just makes it easier and I don't think late game Interloper is too hard (honestly it should have less firewood and animal respawns then it currently has).

Edit: Btw, the pelts only degrade while they are 'fresh' (curing), AFAIK they stop degrading after that, so your 30% pelt will stay 30% forever once it's cured. Still annoying but not a significant problem. That is ofc unless they specifically changed that this update (they did speed up the degradation while curing this patch but it was there for many builds now and always stopped after curing was done).