The Long Term

[Jdavis30]

There is no doubt in my mind that The Long Dark is one of the greatest survival games of all time; however, I have one problem with it. The game has no definite way to survive forever other than to wait for the next map release and hope it contains what you need!

In a way this makes the player's destiny feel somewhat less realistic( immersive) and certainly less inspiring. One would like to believe that after surviving for 1,000+ days in a given environment that the knowledge and skill to become totally independent of the variable resources that are placed throughout the different maps would have been obtained already. Perhaps this is part of the bigger message. Subtly suggesting that there is no way to escape The Long Dark that inevitably will come and kill you, but wouldn't it be just as poetic to believe that there is a way to survive indefinitely? That the player's destiny rests within his or her own hands!

It would make committing more time to playing to the The Long Dark much easier since one knows that the length of ones own survival is based more on the user's practice, knowledge, and skill rather than finding that lucky extra box of matches under a car seat. What I'm suggesting is not a way to make the game easier; in fact, I am completely against anything that would make this game even the slightest bit easier. What I am suggesting is that there is a very, very late game mechanic that would somehow allow the player to generate the absolute, bare-bone necessities. This process would need to be extremely difficult and only viable with the proper planning, skill levels, tools, and knowledge.

With a game mechanic like this the sky becomes the limit for the most experienced of players. I have really high expectations for some of the potential achievements that could be accomplished by using this concept. I really want to know other peoples thoughts or suggestions on this topic, hopefully even the developers too, so please comment!

Thanks,

Jdavis30

Edited April 3, 2018 by Jdavis30
Mispelling.

[Seshins]

interesting - i too would like some way to survive essentially forever. I think with careful management of the basics (cloth, tools etc) you can go for a very long time.

I think a more pressing issue (which is somewhat related to yours) is the long term game mechanic. At the moment once you've established yourself and built up some good supplies, there isn't much to do but "survive".

I've mentioned long term mechanics like migrating animal herds, week+ duration blizzards etc as a way of thinking ahead and planning for events which could take weeks to get through.

It could tie into your suggestion of long term survival in the sense that as these long term game mechanic events unfold, you'd need to adapt or make better use of the lower amounts of resources you have at your disposal, eventually leading into some new bare-bones survival situation. Even then you'd essentially start back at the start - you've got the bare essentials to survive, but what events could you go through now to keep the game engaging?

 

[Hotzn]

Last thing I knew was that it was possible to survive practically indefinitely in the game. Fire can be obtained by using the magnifying glass, which does not ever wear out. So you don't depend on matches. Firewood is an infinite resource if you stick to sticks. A fire can be transported inside a shelter once lit, using the torch-pulling mechanic, so you can have indefinite fire in a shelter as well. Unlimited fire also means unlimited water. Food can be obtained with snares and sometimes fishing, and since rabbits yield guts, snares are also indefinite. There is a theoretical risk of running out of bandages or fishing hooks, but if you know how to avoid wolves, you hardly need bandages. And ever since we were given the hacksaw (which should not have been given to us imo), scrap metal is practically infinite as well. You get more fishing hooks than you will be able to use in a long time. You can hunt deer by chasing them into wolves and then luring the wolf away from the carcass - infinite deer meat & hides. Don't forget to use starving techniques to minimize your calorie usage. You can live for thousands of days and definitely for much longer than you will want to. At least that's how it was when I last played.

[Supermarioman1]

there is no reason to continue playing once the basics have been achieved and all the maps have been explored. there needs to be upgrades to things and reasons to continue exploring.

 

[odizzido]

If you were to make animal respawn speed low enough it would force you to move around instead of just surviving off the same rabbit spawn outside your hut forever.

[Ohbal]

As it has been mentioned, it's already possible to live a really long time if you know what you are doing. The problem with the time is, what to do with it other than the daily routine of collecting sticks, fishing / hunting rabits with stones (no resources needed for this one). and fire starting for water when the sun is shining. 

IMO, what TLD really needs in the long term is... long term projects that are actually fun to pursue. Right now the absolute best part of this game are the first cuople of days / weeks in which you are really struggling to get the basics.  After that, for experienced players, survival is practically granted. 

 

[cekivi]

Welcome to the forums @Jdavis30

And like @Hotzn and @Ohbalmentioned the biggest problem with the Long Dark isn't survival length, it's what to do while surviving. Once you get established there is little to do beyond exploring and keeping your water/food/firewood stocked up. 

[Bano]

i need to navigate here more...

Currently @996 Loper

Not convinced a late game mechanic is needed. The "what to do" a.ka. Boredom factor is the biggest challenge and can easily lead to stupid mistakes.

My conclusion after a lot of contemplation....Survival Can be Indefinite in its present state. Food becomes the greatest liability once resources are depleted = no arrows, hooks -> shift to Snares. Snares, in theory, are an indefinite renewable hunting tool; the challenge is acquiring enough bunnies to sustain survival. I envision constant, diligent movement across multiple locations and maps to having to account for re-spawn. (don't use guides, don't know actual rates). That is a challenge and perhaps a bit ironic if you rely on them to get you going early on.

EDIT: Of course I see @Ohbal point out....stones.....so yeah theoretically, long term survival is indefinite?

I suppose you could also implement scare hunting then attempt to frighten away wolves with fire but who really wants to do that all the time?? A mag would be the only resource you absolutely need as well. 

I could be missing something but I've played out a lot of scenarios and all have some solution. I'm curious where others see barriers?

great topic! happy surviving!

Edited April 9, 2018 by Bano
stupidity

[cekivi]

Welcome to the forums @Bano

And you're right, near indefinite survival is certainly possible. @Drifter Man had a post on a 1000 day run that ended due to the time involved and a game update that deleted the save. I think he got over 800 days in the end though and that was confined to mostly one map (with the occasional looting expedition). For the original post see "1000 Days in the Dam" below

 

[Megaloceros]

You can quite easily survive indefinitely, on any difficulty. You simply can. I have seen a 12 in-game year run on Interloper (Google Rational Bassist TLD if you are interested). On my own stalker run, I've found that, so long as I don't get bitten by wolves (which is fully possible if you live somewhere without them like Trappers with a steady supply of rabbits) you can quite easily survive forever. The real difficulty is devoting yourself to permanent survival. 

[odizzido]

Wow three years later. I am surprised I've been on this forum/owned this game so long.

Yeah I find after about day 20-30 or something that the game is pretty much done for me. With no real way to better my situation and no challenges to overcome it's a solved problem and I don't feel any reason to continue.

[Blizzard Walker]

My Voyager run is currently at Day 1,050.  I tend to be a plodder adverse to unnecessary risks.  I have yet to explore/loot TWM, HRV, Ash Canyon and Bleak Inlet. Instead I methodically learn regions, loot regions, break down items, store and inventory resources.  A spreadsheet tells me precisely what I have in terms of resources: 872 matches, 549 pieces of cloth, 21 cured birch saplings, 110 rifle rounds, 170 revolver rounds, etc.

I look at the game as if I was trying to survive indefinitely.  Surviving need not be exciting.  The challenge for me is to build resources to make a 5000 day plus run possible.  The resources that I view as most crucial to husband carefully are arrow shafts, bows and leather.  Cloth is less of a concern as I may use one piece every 10 days, unless I stumble into a wolf/bear struggle or get caught out in a blizzard. I have gone the last 50 days without shooting a rifle or revolver round.

I would like to see some sort of end game where long term survival leads to some tangible goal.......like rescue.  3,650 days (10 years) would be a realistic goal.

[Mistral]

On 9/11/2021 at 10:52 PM, Megaloceros said:

You can quite easily survive indefinitely, on any difficulty. You simply can. I have seen a 12 in-game year run on Interloper (Google Rational Bassist TLD if you are interested). On my own stalker run, I've found that, so long as I don't get bitten by wolves (which is fully possible if you live somewhere without them like Trappers with a steady supply of rabbits) you can quite easily survive forever. The real difficulty is devoting yourself to permanent survival. 

Yes, you can quite easily survive forever on Interloper, but there are harder Custom settings that will ultimately kill you off at some point, one way or another

[Stinky socks]

On 4/3/2018 at 2:04 AM, Jdavis30 said:

In a way this makes the player's destiny feel somewhat less realistic

How is it realistic for a city doctor to survive outdoors indefinitely?😂 first of all, you're very likely to die in a crash when the airplane goes down during an Aurora. Second, you're even more likely get eaten by an angry wolf on a way to the nearest shelter. Then, you're even more likely to die of hunger or cold!!

Please have realistic expectations from your 'survivor'.

Besides, don't you have other games to play? Why would you want to aimlessly wander around many many hours?

[dbmurph22]

I like the sentiment in the original post, but in my opinion there are plenty of survival/crafting games that fill the need to just find/craft/survive indefinitely.  The Long Dark to me is a poetic exploration game in the midst of certain (quiet) doom - a meditation on the transience of you and an age.  Both the struggle against it and the acceptance of it sort of generates the energy of the games identity and playthroughs.  If anything, it should be harder than it is in the later game.  People survive wayyyy too long.  Difference in philosophy I guess, then.

[Baalhug]

Resuming, there are 2 main ideas in this thread: those you think it would be better if the game could be played indefinitely and those you think it's good as it is. I agree both. The greatness of this game, in my opinion, is the way it forces you to be busy all the time. Well, you can do what you want, you're free to choose what to do next, but if you choose lightly the system will remind you how close you are from end game everytime. Let's talk about interloper, other game difficulties can be long enough (thousands of days). I'm in my 10th run. It's my 5th interloper run (the first 4 were really short, less than a week). I'n past day 300 now. I spent last 100 days in manteinance yard. I think I can get to day 1000 with no problems just staying here. Rabbits alone are not enough to feed you unless you go the starving route. Starving route means you will be at 60% health average all the time and my wolf encounters (full health) often end below 40% health. That means you are letting your chances in the hands of luck. I only went the starvation route first month, after that I had the "well fed" perk all the time. The second problem is weather. After day 50 (I've read) temperatures stop dropping, but there is a huge difference between weather regions. 5 degrees may not seem huge but it's the difference of being able to gather wood from trunks or surviving out of sticks. The difference between being able to gather meat from a wolf corpse with or without a campfire. And more important, the difference between 1 blizzard every 2 days or 2 blizzards every single day. Also weather is the key factor for the third problem: cabin fever. I had a very hard time in Pleasant Valley. I got my first moose there or should I say he got me. I had to build a snow shelter in front of the barn door and I learned the bad way broken ribs have to be healed from the medical menu. They were my hardest 40 days but yet the most interesting and intense. So yeah, surviving is easy. You get your clothes ragged, you repair them, you build your snow shelters, you repair them. And you get out of cloth. You move somewhere else. You're out of water and no sunshine, you use a match. Your improvised knife is about to break, you gather corpses with your hands and move to a forge. You run out of arrows and you go find more sapplings. So in the end it all reduces on how do you manage your resources: looking for the long term or just using what you need in every moment because you didn't plan it enough or you were in a rush because you were freezing and went straight to the wolves between you and your shelter and you lost some arrows.

So yes, I think the game is nice as it is. You can survive for years in interloper if you plan carefully and you go live in places where you have good access to food (easy means good meat/expended resources ratio, wolves are not a good food source), where weather does not force you to lock up more than 3/4 of the day and/or you can fight cabin fever, and you got access to a forge (so you can use your hatchet and knife freely). That place is manteinance yard. It has not the best food sources in the game, too many wolves, a single bear and that moose will take long hollidays. It has a poor access to coal too, you will have to warm up the forge with wood everytime you use it, and when you run out of it you will have to travel relatively far to get more. But the weather is quite warm, in the best hours of day without too much wind and the right pelt clothes you can gather wood and corpses without a campfire (yes, in interloper day 200-300). You can live in the front office, no cabin fever there, it's like a cave with a nice temp bonus and a warm bed. The door is always open but wolves will never pass it. You have the hunting lodge nearby with a 6-stove if you really want to save timber and time. It's starting to get boring but soon I'll be forced to go for a coal expedition and maybe I change my wolf coats for bear ones so this is not interloper anymore.

Nevertheless I think it would be nice if cloth, firestarters and ultimately iron would be infinite and therefore you could survive indefinitely. First of all because some people likes it, and for those of us who feel it's easy enough the way it is now (well, I have read a lot and tried the other difficulties before playing interloper), the company can release a harder difficulty mode where, for instance, meat on the ground or even corpses attract predators (this is an unrealistic behaviour right now), predators can target you from further distance, they don't run away when you get cover, blizzards can run for days, parasites are not removed entirely with cooking 5, etc... Also I would love skill tree was improved as well.

[romerabr]

I think some "collectibles" could appear after some time, like a white wolf after day 200, in some part of the map, where you can hunt and make an exclusive coat, or a more precise hunting rifle in a corpse, after day 500, or a partially sunken boat, with great loot could suddenly appear at some costal area, after day 1000, for example.

This wont change the essence of the game, but it will introduce some challenges and some things do wait for and survive longer.

I have a few saves with 200 - 700 days, on stalker/interloper, where I left and started a new game to look for new adventures...

Edited September 21, 2021 by romerabr

[turtle777]

I have yet to meet anyone that knew what they were doing, and ran out of resources.

You can easily live 1000s of days, even in Interloper. All a matter of managing the existing resources well.

-t

[Stinky socks]

Hmm, well what if you hoard everything and don't know how to store it properly? Or perhaps if you have intestinal parasites and keep eating everything all the time, but always remain hungry because of...well, intestinal parasites?

[Master_Arne]

My strategy is to haul every man made object to the Garage, and fill the floor with saplings.

Edited September 26, 2021 by Master_Arne

[Bean]

I consider that ive “won” TLD when my character has looted all the zones and cached the loot at a few nice places to stay for a couple weeks.  Oh and converted all available brass into rifle and pistol shells ready for use.  And collected all arrow materials and cached them or made arrows.  
And that most of the gear is in the Quonset Hut.  
And all skills are maxed.  Fishing seems to take the longest.  My God the sushi!  
 

anyway once that’s done, so is my survivor!  I run him off the trestle for The Long Drop.  

[Unworthy_potatoYT]

I think you can live forever, make sure you don't lose your arrow heads. through beach combing you can get saplings and cloth. and with the scrap metal from beach combing you can make a fishing tackle to repair clothes (which i think you can do, might be making that up) 

Here's a list of items you can find from beach combing (stolen from the wiki)

• Prybar
• Reclaimed wood
• Stick
• Cloth
• Scrap metal
• Coho Salmon (raw)
• Smallmouth Bass (raw)
• Painkillers
• Clothing
• Cedar firewood
• Fir firewood
• Rifle ammunition
• Rifle Shell Casing
• Flare Shell
• Bandage
• Cat-tail Stalks
• Cat-tail Head
• Birch Bark
• Improvised knife
• Old man's beard lichen
• Broken Arrows
• Maple Saplings
• Birch Saplings
• Recycled Cans

[peteloud]

5 hours ago, Bean said:

. . . and cached the loot at a few nice places . . . .

Why do you cache the loot in a small number of places? 

It is a much better solution to have your resources spread throughout the the whole area.

[Leeanda]

5 hours ago, Unworthy_potatoYT said:

I think you can live forever, make sure you don't lose your arrow heads. through beach combing you can get saplings and cloth. and with the scrap metal from beach combing you can make a fishing tackle to repair clothes (which i think you can do, might be making that up) 

Here's a list of items you can find from beach combing (stolen from the wiki)

• Prybar
• Reclaimed wood
• Stick
• Cloth
• Scrap metal
• Coho Salmon (raw)
• Smallmouth Bass (raw)
• Painkillers
• Clothing
• Cedar firewood
• Fir firewood
• Rifle ammunition
• Rifle Shell Casing
• Flare Shell
• Bandage
• Cat-tail Stalks
• Cat-tail Head
• Birch Bark
• Improvised knife
• Old man's beard lichen
• Broken Arrows
• Maple Saplings
• Birch Saplings
• Recycled Cans

Thats an interesting collection of items, especially the crowbar!?  Not sure how that washes up on a beach though🤔   

Yes you can use fishing tackle to repair clothes! Can be a lifesaver. 

[Stinky socks]

4 hours ago, peteloud said:

Why do you cache the loot in a small number of places? 

It is a much better solution to have your resources spread throughout the the whole area.

Agreed, I can stop by any area and even wait out blizzard before going out hunting.