Think you're good at TLD? Try the DEADMAN CHALLENGE


JAFO

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In the last week or so, there's an interesting (and incredibly entertaining -to watch at least!-) challenge that's popped up in a few Twitch Streams.

It was invented by @Kinnasmash, who started out making a custom mode to help xeroplanes get better at dealing with wolves, and kinda devolved into a prank/troll on him. Oddly enough, it then turned into a hit!

Here are the basics:

Everything good set to minimum - everything bad set to maximum
NO condition recovery - the only way to gain condition is with stims
Loot is worse than Interloper - Stalker level wolves

There are only 2 rules:
1. Two Feats Maximum, Random Spawn Location
2. Survive

Secondary challenge: Retain your sanity for 15 days

First to prove to Kinnasmash they made it to 30 days wins.

The custom code is:   8MHI-/z8M-Dw+/-wSWm-bAAA

"Deadman mode - no happiness, only cold..."

*WARNING* May Will cause excessive cursing and other bad language.

 

To date, the record stands at 15 days (TheDEADP00L)

 

Twitch Streamers playing the challenge:
xeroplanes
TheDEADP00L
RestlessCorpse
gameslif84
evilkmart
obvs

YouTube players doing the challenge:
Vonwoah

Edited by JAFO
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2 minutes ago, NardoLoopa said:

How would one fined recordings of these runs?  (asking for a friend).

Here are some of the Twitch streamers.. the ones that have recordings I know of..  

(WARNING! Language may not be suitable for work or children.. this challenge tends to stress players out more than usual.)

https://www.twitch.tv/thedeadp00l

https://www.twitch.tv/restlesscorpse

https://www.twitch.tv/gameslif84

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12 minutes ago, Cr41g said:

I would be interested in giving this  a whirl (writes down code)...but my lack of knowledge on loot tables and guaranteed spawns will result in many first day deaths

That's ok.. and the rules don't forbid looking up the loot tables. Trust me, even with them, you're gonna struggle. Watching some of the streams I've linked to above may help.

 

10 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

Thanks for the tip @JAFO! Let Deadmen roll :D

You're welcome, mate! Very happy to see you giving it a shot!

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7 hours ago, JAFO said:
8 hours ago, Hotzn said:

Interesting challenge getting back to the roots of TLD.

That it is.. honestly, it makes for the most entertaining TLD streaming I've ever seen..

Isn't it interesting? Attention and excitement comes when the skill ceiling is raised. 

Might try this:)

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Cross-posting from Drifter Man's challenge attempt, for those who may not see it..

 

Sorry.. this turned into a bigger post than intended.. but better too much information, than too little...

5 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

I welcome any tips! What do the most successful survivors do differently? What is the main killer - cold, hunger, wolves?
...
I welcome all discussion on deadman theory and practice :)

Honestly? Those aren't easy questions to answer...

Let's see.. you asked "What is the main killer - cold, hunger, wolves?" 

Having observed quite a few attempts now, "All of the above", is what I'd say. Because they all compound on each other. But that's not very helpful.. so..

First and foremost thing I've seen so far, I think, is that you really need a hefty dose of starting luck. A good spawn location, and some essential loot items obtained early on, not surprisingly seems to make a huge difference. A hacksaw, hammer and even the can-opener are almost as essential as matches (calories are incredibly precious, -because you need SO many of them- and a can-opener makes sure you get every single one of the little buggers that you can (pun intended)). Bedroll is also a high priority, as you generally can't travel very far before needing to regain body heat, and matches are almost certainly in shorter supply than you'd like. Even if they already were, caves are your new best friend.

You need a good memory. Forgetting where you left things, or forgetting items that you need to pick up and take with you, will be very costly in terms of calories that you can ill afford. DO NOT FORGET THINGS! If you have a bad memory, take copious notes, make checklists, or do whatever else it takes to mitigate it. 

You need rigid, iron-hard self-discipline. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard a Deadman say "I've gotta fight the urge to run just now", then 15-20 seconds later start sprinting, I'd be able to buy a new computer. Lopers are used to sprinting, to minimise exposure. It becomes a habit. Sprinting burns precious calories faster. Can you really afford to burn them willy-nilly? If you can do a cost/benefit analysis of calories burned sprinting vs potential cold-damage taken walking vs calories on hand, in your head, you're ahead of the pack (another pun!). There are no easy choices in this regard, and the wrong choice will cost you dearly.

Another area where this self-discipline becomes important is when harvesting carcasses. Wolf detection ranges are off the scale.. and that applies to scent as well as eyesight. It's very important to drop every single gut and piece of meat as soon as it's harvested, before taking the next one. Keep just one of them on you as you work, and pretty much every wolf on the map will be on its way to a reception committee formed in your honour. Just ask TheDEADP00L about what happened the one time he forgot this rule.

You need high situational awareness.. and I don't mean just the regular kind. Lopers are used to ignoring certain red bars, particularly the stomach one. You'll need to re-train your brain to treat any and every red bar like an alarm going off. Better yet, you need to train yourself to be aware of them getting low, before they turn red. I've lost count of how many times I've heard "Holy SHIT! When did that turn red?!?!"

If you're a natural-born mountain-goat, you're ahead of the pack yet again. Shortcuts save calories, reduce exposure time, and avoid wolves. TheDEADP00L is 65% goat, and now I think on it, I suspect it's at least part of the reason why, despite (sometimes) having a memory like a sieve and the self-restraint of a 5yo*, he's way out in front of everyone else on this challenge so far. Watching him, I've learned routes that I had no idea existed or were even possible (both up and down-hill).
* (and I mean that in the nicest way possible, in case you're reading this, DP!)

 

What else? Beware of getting caught in a vortex. Certain locations (the Carter Dam is a major one, and there are almost certainly others) can suck you in, and it becomes difficult to leave, with the result that you end up burning far more calories than you should have for proportionately little gain, before you finally realise that you need to get the hell out of there, no matter the cost. In Deadman, the law of diminishing returns can bite your ass in a particularly vicious way.

What do I mean, exactly? In this challenge, resources are stretched very thin, across the entire game world. Carter Dam, thanks to the unique topography and layout, can take a fair amount of time to check thoroughly, and the combination of time spent gathering meagre supplies, time (and resources) spent cooking and making water, the need for adequate rest, bad weather and wolves can mean you easily spend a couple of days or more getting/doing everything you want to before moving on. At which point you discover that you've already cleared out everything that can be eaten or burned in a considerable radius around you. Sure, there might be some burnables you can still break down, but you no longer have the calories to spare to do so.

You need calories and firewood in order to leave without taking a condition hit.. and you have neither. Being stuck between a rock and a hard place never hurt quite so much...

 

Get the flare gun and shells from the ravine. Don't argue.. just do it.

 

Something I suspect will become important as the envelope gets pushed closer and closer to the 30 days mark, is long-term planning.

Huh? 25 days counts as "long-term"?  Yes, it does.. really...

Those scarce resources I mentioned? Imagine, for a moment, that you're travelling across the TLD world like some kind of Dyson(TM) vacuum cleaner.. consuming all the cattails, mushrooms, rosehips and packaged food as you go.. (that ain't hard to do in this mode, believe me)  Now, what happens if you need to travel back that way again (and then return?) in a week or two's time? Starvation diets are only fun when they don't kill you...

So it may well become a necessary part of strategy to do your best to leave whatever you can spare, untouched.. if it later becomes critically important, for example, to reach a forge, or a supply cache, it would be nice to not have to half kill yourself getting there. But the resource margins are already razor-thin.. I wish you the best of luck getting the balance right!

 

You asked about Deadman theory and practice. Well, that's a book that is being slowly and painfully written by those attempting the challenge. In other words, we don't know, yet, exactly what the best strategies and tactics are. Or the best timing for them.

TheDEADP00L has been experimenting with trying to harvest all the deer carcasses he can.. it seems to have gotten him to 16 days, but he's beginning to question whether it is, in fact, the best long-term approach, because it definitely has downsides. It has been suggested that making snares and subsisting on rabbits may be a better approach. Lopers usually have a tendency to sneer at snares, but unless you're a crack shot with a stone every time, a snare is gonna give you less cold damage than hunting bunnies with rocks. And unlike you, snares can still catch bunnies during blizzards.

The problem with rabbits, of course, is that catching, cleaning and cooking them generally burns up more calories than you get from eating them. Whether or not the combination of snares and the recently revised cooking times have tipped the equation back in the player's favour is a question to which we currently don't have an answer.

Fishing has also been mooted as a key strategy. The biggest problem with fishing, of course, is that you need a LOT of firewood to make it viable. Especially when you factor in that you need extra in case the inevitable blizzard turns your fishing trip into a sleepover. Next biggest problem is obtaining/crafting enough line. I suspect (without any evidence, of course) that crafting a hatchet may also turn out to be essential to success in this regard.

And now that particular subject has been raised, crafting a knife MAY be a good idea, if you can do so early enough in a run, or it might not.. we don't know yet. The only attempt in which a knife was crafted ended shortly afterwards. While you're at it, some arrow-heads may come in handy as well. But it's expensive.. you're gonna need a lot of calories and water in the process. More than you expect to, even if it is only a minimal forging session.

TheDEADP00L has so far resisted every effort to persuade him that clothing repair is necessary, on the grounds of un-affordable calorie expenditure.. is he right or wrong? We don't know yet. But I do know that on day 20 the global temperatures start their decline, bottoming out around day 50. Also, as Hinterland have said, the decline is steeper (and presumably deeper?), the higher the difficulty level chosen. And Deadman difficulty is about as bad as it gets. So.. the final 10 days of this challenge are going to become.. rather challenging, I suspect.

 

A parting thought.. like in a regular playthrough, there is probably a "hump", after which, if you can get that far, things become easier. Certainly the conversations that challengers and viewers have had on the subject assume it has to be there somewhere, just waiting to be found.

The more cynical part of me suspects the "hump" exists.. around day 30.

Edited by JAFO
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quick question for anyone that is giving this a try using the official custom code 8MHI-/z8M-Dw+/-wSWm-bAAA .... is the time factor changed from 1X ?

I think I am going to give this a go tonight and if I can make it more than 3 days I would consider it an outstanding success...

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2 minutes ago, Cr41g said:

quick question for anyone that is giving this a try using the official custom code 8MHI-/z8M-Dw+/-wSWm-bAAA .... is the time factor changed from 1X ?

I'm pretty much certain that time factors have NOT been touched.. certainly it's never been raised in any conversations with @Kinnasmash.

 

Oh.. and good luck!

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3 hours ago, Cr41g said:

quick question for anyone that is giving this a try using the official custom code 8MHI-/z8M-Dw+/-wSWm-bAAA .... is the time factor changed from 1X ?

It has not been changed. However, due to the no condition recovery (and the high weather variability), sleeping an hour at a time is the best strategy so the days may seem to be a different length from loper.

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4 hours ago, Pillock said:

Well, I'm officially crap this! 

My best is 3 days so far,from a start in Desolation Point.

Believe it or not, that's not too bad.

4 hours ago, Pillock said:

I made The Wrong Decision. And death followed. 

My advice : don't make the wrong decision. Ever. 

It's said that Interloper is often unforgiving of mistakes..

Deadman will take your mistakes, and beat you over the head with them, until you die.

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Actually this is a lot of fun. :D

My first attempt I spawned in ML near the logging camp and went unnamed pond, trappers and camp office 1 day. No prybar, no matches, no Mag.lens. but a bed roll. Found matches at the derailment, made 4 L water and went to sleep somewhere around 80 pct. health. NExt day was lookout where I found a hammer then logging camp and the dam. Tried to harvest cattails at the river but had to maneuver around a moose (O.o). Day 3 I was going through ravine getting cattails on the way sleeping in rabbit groove in CH. Day 4 was Rabbit Island, fishing camp, logging camp and the dear by the camp around 45 pct. health. Day 5 I went to the qouncet where I found my beloved hacksaw. From there to the lookout and the small village beneath it. Day 6 the food situation was kinda dire, so I chopped some rabbits near misanthropes. Bad weather and a pack of wolves caught up and I was flanked without any bait or wood for emergency fire. Survived the attack with 11 health so could have dragged it to  7  days - but GG.

My 2 cents on strategy at this early stage

  • Go even faster than regular Interloper.
  • Calories is time - don't waste time on rabbits or repairs unless it really fits in your day. 
  • Use teas/coffee or cans to boost cold protection since matches won't be an issue anyway.
  • Only real option to get to 30 days seems to be to get a bow somehow - I think by going through FM forge where food is ample. Since the world is cooling I would guess that you need to hit the forge around day 7 - 8 to have a chance with saplings curing somewhere at the same time. 

 Will try again some time.

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