The Endless Bear

[dahemac]

The Long Dark is a beautiful game for players who want the decisions they make to be the cause of their survival or death. Stabbing this magic bear to death over and over and over, and over and over and over, and (boss battle) over and over and over again and again is really tedious. Sitting still for minutes at a time waiting for the bear to move off is really tedious. Getting to the spear and getting mauled because of game mechanics, click on the spear, click again to inventory the spear (literally the only thing you would be doing with it), then press 2 to actually have the thing in your hands, then lmb and hope that the game does not just do nothing. I have already fought this bear off at two towers. It is not like I don’t know how. I guess I will spend an hour here or there to try to grind through this game-fail montage so I can get back to Wintermute. But damn!

Edit: Yay! I manged it after two more tries. Glad that is over. Narratively it doesn't even make any sense. My gear disappeared and reappeared. The bear could just have died the second time it attacked. The boss battle was more like a nightmare that passed like Groundhog Day.

Edited March 25, 2019 by dahemac
follow up

[hozz1235]

The end battle was difficult for some (myself included, I think I spent about 3 hours trying it).  Frustrating yes.  Rewarding?  Yes!

[Doc Feral]

I extremely hated the thrice-longer-than-needed sneaking and hiding part, the fight was satisfying.

[dahemac]

4 hours ago, hozz1235 said:

Frustrating yes.  Rewarding?  Yes!

What was the reward?

[hozz1235]

1 hour ago, dahemac said:

What was the reward?

Accomplishment.  Not every reward in this world is physical.

[dahemac]

2 hours ago, hozz1235 said:

Accomplishment.  Not every reward in this world is physical.

Excellent. I did say, “Glad that is over.” Gladness is a fine reward.

[hozz1235]

18 hours ago, dahemac said:

Excellent. I did say, “Glad that is over.” Gladness is a fine reward.

That it is, my friend.

[Dougie]

As with my thread “Just Can't Kill The Bear”, I've left Wintermute, maybe until they fix this game killer boss fight. I like a challenge, but the program is stacked in the game’s favor.  I got through the original predux fight with the bear alright, but not this one.  I do play Survival quite a lot.

 

[Skitfaced]

On 3/25/2019 at 1:38 PM, dahemac said:

Getting to the spear and getting mauled because of game mechanics, click on the spear, click again to inventory the spear (literally the only thing you would be doing with it), then press 2 to actually have the thing in your hands, then lmb and hope that the game does not just do nothing. 

I agree, this boss fight wasn't that difficult to figure out. It's just too many miraculous perfect timings factor into whether or not it actually works. Biggest frustration for me is the spear mechanics itself. Taking too long to "brace" the spear, and the stupid two second time limit you have until he raises the spear and stops bracing. Which is a stupid mechanic. I can't think of any reason that would prevent someone from holding a spear steady.

Furthermore I had a bunch of gear on the floor at Jeremiah's place I wanted to come back for but after the cutscene and leaving the house I found that not only was the door now permanently locked, but there was no autosave inside the cabin after the cutscene. So my stuff is gone for good and my clothing is trashed. This boss fight has taken out a lot of my motivation to keep playing, after all that hard work, my chances of survival and continuing we're just thrown in the trash. 

Edit: Scratch the part about losing my stuff. The game automatically detects everything you dropped in the building before you're locked out and stores it in your inventory. I didn't notice until I realized I was 12 kg overencumbered 😂

Edited March 30, 2019 by Skitfaced
Found my stuff

[Doc Feral]

43 minutes ago, Skitfaced said:

 12 kg overencumbered 

12kg? Not 120 like me? I really should do something for my compulsive looting and hoarding.

[XaldinVii]

On 3/30/2019 at 11:38 AM, Skitfaced said:

Taking too long to "brace" the spear, and the stupid two second time limit you have until he raises the spear and stops bracing.

@Skitfaced I found out through some trial and error that the Brace mechanic with the Spear is tied to your stamina. So if you run to the spear and then immediately raise it won't last too long. If you raise the spear right as the bear is about to charge, with a nearly full or full stamina wheel, it allows you to keep it up a fairly long time.

[Admin]

Just a heads-up that although STEADFAST RANGER - our latest update released today - focuses predominantly on Survival Mode, it also comes with two things that might help in this area.

1. We've added an Accessible Struggle option, which gives you the choice to use a "Hold to Win" for Struggles (vs. button-mashing)
    
2. We've cleaned up some of the Bear Spear gameplay and tweaked the Bear Cave section to make it a bit less frustrating. 

Existing saves should work - so you might want to give it another go!

 

PS: update video and full patch notes can be found here.

[peteloud]

XaldinVii

 

". . . . the Brace mechanic with the Spear is tied to your stamina. "

I was severely injured, (perhaps killed, I can't remember), a few times before I realised that.  Once I knew that it was easy.  The next time the bear attacked me I was able to kill him.

[Simone bombata]

I have been trying to kill this damn bear for hours. Easily 10 hours. I've tried everything. I've attacked, hid in a cave, turned my socks into bandages in case I start losing blood, patched myself up, attacked FOUR more times, used the stimulant when my life is running low. I've even tried hiding in a cave after attacking several times, just to see if the bear would finally bleed out and die. Nothing. I just can't kill this bear. Seriously, why make this such a frustrating experience? I'm about to give up and go back to survival mode. This is just cruel. Why, why would you do this?

[Sov3rei8n]

12 hours ago, Simone bombata said:

I have been trying to kill this damn bear for hours. Easily 10 hours. I've tried everything. I've attacked, hid in a cave, turned my socks into bandages in case I start losing blood, patched myself up, attacked FOUR more times, used the stimulant when my life is running low. I've even tried hiding in a cave after attacking several times, just to see if the bear would finally bleed out and die. Nothing. I just can't kill this bear. Seriously, why make this such a frustrating experience? I'm about to give up and go back to survival mode. This is just cruel. Why, why would you do this?

Are you in the cave?

You need to spear the bear three times and it will die. If you are finding it difficult, use Options -> Accessibility -> Press and hold - makes the struggle much, much easier. Just press the left mouse button and the bear will kill itself against your spear.

You cannot kill it before the cave section, before you will only be able to scare it away (while harvesting radio components)

Edited May 19, 2019 by Sov3rei8n

[ajb1978]

16 hours ago, Simone bombata said:

I have been trying to kill this damn bear for hours. Easily 10 hours. I've tried everything. I've attacked, hid in a cave, turned my socks into bandages in case I start losing blood, patched myself up, attacked FOUR more times, used the stimulant when my life is running low. I've even tried hiding in a cave after attacking several times, just to see if the bear would finally bleed out and die. Nothing. I just can't kill this bear. Seriously, why make this such a frustrating experience? I'm about to give up and go back to survival mode. This is just cruel. Why, why would you do this?

Try turning the accessible struggle on, so that when the struggle meter appears, you simply have to hold the mouse button down vs. mashing it repeatedly.

Other than that, it's just a matter of timing.  Your stamina (sprint meter) indicates how long you can keep the spear raised, so the more sprinting around you do the less likely you'll be able to impale the bear.  When you do plant the spear, just hold the mouse button down and wait for the bear to impale himself.  The only timing you have to worry about is not planting the spear too early that you run out of stamina, and not to plant it too late that it's not in position by the time the bear reaches you.

A mistake a lot of players make is thinking they have to release the mouse button at the last instant.  I don't know where that came from, but it's not true--just keep that spear planted until the bear impales himself, then the struggle begins.  With accessible struggle active, you should be victorious every time.

Then crawl into one of those cubby holes and wait for your stamina to recharge.  Then emerge and face him again.  Then repeat a final time, and Bob's you uncle.

[ManicManiac]

It's very possible to beat this bear.  I managed it after redux and well before steadfast ranger.  While I can understand the frustrations, it's not impossible.  With steadfast ranger they site is being tuned to be less frustrating... though I don't know what that means, I've not been back to play Wintermute since the last update.  I can't offer much advice for console players... but for PC, I can say that if you have a situation where you have low frame rate I can confirm that it makes the struggle mechanics very very difficult - to the point of being a losing proposition every time.

If this sound familiar (and you are a PC player), then frame rate might be a contributing factor for you.  You can try tuning the graphic settings down a bit, it may not look as nice but if you can get your frame rate above 60-70 FPS things should work a lot better.  I had two different games behave like this... on my old laptop my hardware was easily 5 years old, and my frame rate on those two games was something like 23-32 FPS.  Turned out that with the frame rate so low, the game was basically "missing clicks" (meaning as I was tapping not all of my taps were being registered by the game).  Once I got some new hardware and improved my frame rate, suddenly click-struggles weren't a problem anymore and things were much more responsive.

There is my two cents, I hope it helps someone.  I know one player here was having a similar problem, and she was finally able to defeat the old bear - her temporary solution was to turn down the resolution a little and that gave her enough of a performance boost that she was able to conquer the bear before Steadfast Ranger dropped.

Edited May 19, 2019 by ManicManiac