Why I Stopped Starting in Pleasant Valley

[Celeblith]

One of my most tragic survival stories comes from Pleasant Valley. Like several people on this forum, I thought it might be a good idea to establish myself at the farmhouse there. Why not? It's a nice enough place, plenty of game in the farmlands and forests on the surround, a fair amount of firewood, and decent prospects for loot. Yes, I felt quite at home my first few days there nestled in my flannels, warming by the stove in the decrepit kitchen. 

I'd made the mistake in an earlier save (also starting in Pleasant Valley) of venturing outside the territory on a circuitous journey, the final few kilometers of which I only knew in theory as I'd never walked that extent of the path; long story short, I got eaten by a wolf as I stumbled through the dark in the middle of the night. For fear of a similar demise befalling me this time, I resolved myself to stay within the confines of the valley to explore, map, gather, and prepare for expeditions much later. An important preface to the story: on an expedition up the hills on the radio-tower-side of the farmstead, I discovered a hunting rifle in the cold, ghostly remains of the control hut. A great find; it was with this gun that I hunted my first deer (I wasted about eight shots). 

It's been said that the root cause of almost all the deaths experienced by players of TLD is hubris. Such was the case for me. It was my short-term goal to cure enough pelts to make a full suit of animal-skin clothing, and to do that I needed one more wolf pelt. Feeling tough with my new rifle, I left my farmstead home one morning with an itchy trigger finger. What I encountered on my hunt was far more than I bargained for. I heard it before I saw it: the whimpering of a frightened wolf, the snuffle of a lumbering bear. As I turned, I witnessed the canine flee the great hulking beast which lurched slowly after it. Upon seeing me, however, the wolf forgot its fear and charged. I hadn't counted on behavior like this, and I leveled my rifle all too late. In my medicine stash, I found bandages to stanch the flow of thick blood which pulsed out of me and left a trail of droplets from the site of the attack to the bathroom in the farmhouse. It wasn't until my wounds were tended to that I realized what I was missing: antiseptic.

Not knowing of any sure spot to find it, I quit my mental search for peroxide quickly. There was one alternative: a treatment of Old Man's Beard. But where to find it? My condition was weak--about 50%--so I knew that whatever I did, I had to do it carefully. I set off in the direction of the radio tower, the only swath of the wilderness I'd thoroughly explored. I seemed to recall seeing some of my quarry there on a past expedition; what I found was disappointing. 

There's a small pond out there with a single fishing hut on it. It was in the vicinity of this shelter that I realized something devastating: I had no gloves; they'd been shredded in the initial attack. 

At risk of hypothermia and infection, I sat by the fire I'd started in the fishing hut and thought. With predators lurking behind potentially any tree, going out any farther from known territory might well have been a death sentence; that ruled out Old Man's Beard . . . unless . . .

If I made haste to the radio tower, several of three outcomes might've resulted: 1. I find some Old Man's Beard on the trip there; 2. I find some antiseptic inside the shelter there; or that which I dreaded, 3. I find neither and become trapped on a mountain come dusk, which was not far off. I had my doubts, but it was my best chance.

This is where I realized I was living out a case study in worst-case-scenarios. I hadn't made it halfway when I attracted the attention of another wolf. He dogged my steps (no pun intended) all the way to the tower where he nearly caught me as I slipped between the chain link fence which marked the line between safety and danger.  My relief at being beyond the animal's reach was tempered by my dejection at not finding any Old Man's Beard. I had one last chance.

Creeping into the hut, I knew on some level already what I'd find--or not find, as it were. I wasn't surprised when I searched every container, every nook and cranny of the hut, and came up empty. Desperately, I came up with one last idea: I'd go out and scout around the tower, utilizing the commanding vantage point of the hilltop. But nature wasn't done with me, and as I stepped out into the twilight, I felt a creeping sense of dread.

The wolf was there. Fed up, I decided to eliminate him if it was in my power. I leveled my rifle, but before I could pull the trigger, an all too familiar sound met my ears: the whimper of the wolf, the heavy breaths of the bear. Had he followed me all the way here? I was outside the fence, and one thing I'd never done was attempt to shoot a bear. Yet again, my hubris overcame me: "At this range," I thought, "what could go wrong?" Everything. Everything could and did go wrong. What I didn't know was that bears don't fear rifles; they hate them. The crack of the shot's report hadn't stopped echoing in the cold hills when I turned tail and ran for my life, ran back to the safety of the fence--but the bear was faster.

I don't have to describe to you the terror of a mauling, so I simply won't. I will, however, describe the events that followed.

Remarkably, the bear didn't kill me. Not directly, anyway. I bandaged my wounds, but to my dismay I was met with an even greater threat than the risk of an infection: the risk of two infections. I lay in the bottom bunk in the radio hut and awaited death.

Death, however, did not come. I was running out of supplies, though, and as my first infection risk reached 90%, I hoped more than ever that I'd pull through, and an hour later my infection risk healed--and I developed an infection in earnest.

I'd never known that infections could be cured with antibiotics. "I'm saved," I thought, remembering my large store of medicine back at home. How naive I was. At any rate, one task awaited me: I had to find my way down the mountain in the dark, and that's exactly what I did. Slowly, careful not to slip and fall the many meters to the foot of the hill, I picked a path down, down to the valley's floor. Relief washed over me as I arrived at my back door. "I'll make it after all," I thought. I opened the door, transitioned to the loading screen . . . and my game crashed. Fuck me.

What could be more stressful than picking one's way down a hill, through a wood, and across a field to one's home, all the while dodging the attentions of wolves and bears? Doing. It. Twice.

To this day I don't know why the medicine and the tea didn't work. I took every antibiotic I had (and I had a lot). It didn't do a damn thing. You'd think I'd have died of overdose, but I wasn't so lucky. I spent the rest of the night convalescing (or trying to) in the upstairs bedroom. But I knew I wasn't healing, and once the second infection took hold, I knew the end was near. 

Why should I have come all this way, survived all these perils, only to die in my bed clutching an empty pill bottle? Why didn't the bear just kill me then and there? Did he know this is how I would end? Was this my punishment for thinking I could kill him, for trying to when he'd done me no harm? Probably, probably. If nothing else, this was a consequence of my hubris. I woke from troubled dreams with 5% condition, and it was falling rapidly. Within minutes, I was at 1%, and my infections were far from breaking. I lay in my bed one last time, and with no intention of ever getting out of it. My fevered thoughts turned to the bear. He was more of a survivor than I, and my last hopes were that the gunshot hadn't wounded him too badly, and that he might live on where I could not have, should not have.

My eyes shut, and I faded into The Long Dark.

[dead frozen dude]

20 hours ago, Celeblith said:

To this day I don't know why the medicine and the tea didn't work. I took every antibiotic I had (and I had a lot). It didn't do a damn thing. You'd think I'd have died of overdose, but I wasn't so lucky. I spent the rest of the night convalescing (or trying to) in the upstairs bedroom. But I knew I wasn't healing, and once the second infection took hold, I knew the end was near. 

Infection mechanic is a cruel pitfall that claimed a many survivor, but you could have lived through this... You had to take a full 10 hour sleep afterwards, not in spells... not waking yourself up to check your condition... There's no other way to cure it.

[Celeblith]

22 minutes ago, dead frozen dude said:

Infection mechanic is a cruel pitfall that claimed a many survivor, but you could have lived through this... You had to take a full 10 hour sleep afterwards, not in spells... not waking yourself up to check your condition... There's no other way to cure it.

That would've been nice to know . . . but did I even deserve to live? I think not.

[hozz1235]

After those hardships, of course you deserved to live!