My first impressions, and questions

[ChaosPinhead]

So I am on my 4th or 5th pass. My 4th was aweful. I spawned in the middle of the night in the middle of the woods, was attacked by a wolf 4 seconds into the game, then a second wolf 5 seconds after that (this probably shouldn't happen lol). Amazingly I survived and made it a little further to the Dam but then got attacked by another wolf in there and killed. My next run however I am doing great so far. I have a rifle, 15 rounds of ammo, have killed 3 deer, made some cooked meat, potable water, but then I stored all the raw venison in a shack because it was too heavy, not positive I know how to get back to it. It was the trappers shack. Anyhow here are my notes/questions.

I have found these areas...

Dam, Wrecked traincars, camp office, lake cabins, fishing huts, trappers hut, Firetower, collapsed tunnel, few trailers in the woods. Aside from these locations is there anything else. I seem to be hitting the map borders rather quickly and the map is feeling kinda small at this point. Once you have explored all the "main areas" and found all the tinder etc you can find, once it runs out, how do you really get more, loot doesn't respawn. I found tinder once scavenging but you find much more wood than you do tinder. Also it doesn't feel possible to "simulate" living in one spot for a long time. The trappers hut was the best place I've found so far because deer seemed to spawn in the field next to it regularly. It would be nice if I could hunker down and amass a lot of wood and get the fire ready to burn for days, so I can go exploring and come back to a warm place, but it feels like some tasks exhaust me really quickly like skinning a dear. Exploring at night is just not at all worth it so if you get fatigued at like 4pm, you might as well just sleep for the next 16 hours but that wastes a lot of food and water and if your fatigued you walk really slow. Anyone have any advice on what to do next or where I can find some new places to explore?

Overall I really like this game so far which is great since there is hopefully a LOT more to come. At the moment I am in the middle of day 5, just rested in a fishing hut on mystery lake to save the game so I could take my family out to lunch. Will jump back in later and continue my adventure.

[Ruhroe]

[spoilers ahead]

There is a hidden bunker. I have seen at least one video about it, and when I spawned at that location couldn't find it. I also spent hours just spawning new games, running around before I died, and never found it. The video suggested its location might be dynamic--assuming it's still in game, this is reasonable.

Reddit also has some good discussion regarding game hints. You can check out the long dark subreddit

There's so many possible hints, I'm sure I can't cover them all quickly. Keep in mind the game has limited resources. The trick is to try to live as long as you can (you will die), by getting the most out of those resources. For example, fires, right now at least, can't be sustained to keep you warm. In fact, I would try never to use a fire just for this purpose. Since tinder is rare some games, I try my best to melt and boil lots of water at once, and cook whatever I can also all at the same time. Harvested meat spoils (before and after being cooked), but lasts longer if you put it inside a container, such as a cabinet, rather than holding it. Water doesn't spoil. If you make eight liters, you can drop six liters to pick up later. It's possible to only burn a fire maybe only once every few days. [edit]

A couple other small points. Why drop the water? Well, the more you carry, the more weight you have and the more calories you burn. A few other things affect how many calories you burn per hours, like sprinting or sleeping. (I also think how cold you are too, but honestly am pulling a brain freeze and don't remember exactly).

Regarding clothing. It's best to try to get the most out of it like everything else. First, clothing degrades as you wear it. The more items of clothing you wear at once, the more wear and tear you are doing per hour. Second, the better condition an article of clothing is the better stats it will have; that is, it will provide better protection and/or heat conservation. Third, note that not all buildings have the same internal temperature. This means, it takes more clothes (depending on their wear are tear, and type) to stay warm in some of the shacks than say, the Trapper's cabin. Forth, while sleeping it's best to try to use (wear) as little clothing as possible (I often go with just a wool hat, commando style at night). This prevents the clothes you don't need from degrading. Last, for this same reason, besides other obvious reasons, it's best not to go outside on really, really windy or cold periods (it's colder at night) if you can avoid it.

Another thing which comes to mind: crafting skill. It's easy right now to get clothing in game to harvest for cloth. With this cloth you can repair clothes. Since there's so much cloth, I find it's best to repair clothes first before attempting repairs on an axe, knife or hunting rifle. The reason is as you repair items your crafting skill goes up, which makes it less likely you will fail on the axe, knife and/or hunting rifle, which require the harder to find fir wood. If you fail the attempt, you lose the materials. It's best to try not to fail. The only caveat here is you need sewing kits, but I find those fairly frequently and it's not usually an issue.