Suggestions after 1,000 days of Voyager

[peteloud]

I have just completed 1,000 game days on a Voyager run so I feel that it is not unreasonable to share some of my experience with new players.  I ended my 1,000 day run with a fishing holiday at the coast, at the fishing huts in Coastal Highway. There I had easy access to everything I needed.

The first point that I must make is that TLD is a game with the objective of entertaining players.  Some players want hard-core challenges, others an easy relaxing time.  There is no right or superior way to play.  If you enjoy playing TLD everyone should be happy. I play a middle level game.  I want to be constantly challenged and often on the cusp of death, in the game. I don't want a stressful game, heart attack and real death.  I prefer to play at Voyager - Stalker, or between the two, but I sometimes play at Pilgrim level to demonstrate the game to friends and to my young grand-daughters.

There are a few strategies I use that are at odds with some others who comment here.

First of all I avoid using the excellent maps prepared by Whiteberry.  They make the game too easy.  The game is at its best when you don't know where you are, where there is shelter and where the resources are.  It is that living on the edge that makes the game exciting and gets the Adrenalin flowing.  I was delighted when I first saw the maps, but soon found they spoiled the game.

I use the bow and arrows and avoid the rifle. They have similar killing power but the rifle is heavy. If you are highly loaded you travel slowly and are limited in what you can pick up as you move around.   In this latest game I had a couple of revolvers and loads of ammo, but couldn't be bothered with them.  I assumed it was just extra load like the rifle.

I do not go around collecting everything I find and pile it up in central bases.  I do have well stocked bases, but I like to have resources spread wherever I might go in case of having an emergency later in the game.  I like to leave every shelter in which I stay equipped for an emergency return visit.  I like to leave water, food and wood everywhere I stay.  I also leave other resources such cloth and cured rabbit skins etc. for repairs that I might need at a later date.

Almost every time I kill an animal I butcher it for the meat and drop it by the carcass.    This means that I don't have to carry it around, slowing me down and attracting wolves.  That meat will lie there for a long time so you can pick it up whenever it is convenient. Obviously if I need food I take the meat.

 

To keep up my interest and give me new challenges halfway through this run I decided to fully map each region.  This meant returning to each region and mapping all of the black patches on my charcoal maps.  This is a great challenge because it means that you must go everywhere, and some of those places are tricky.

I could go on with a million other strategies that I have, but everyone must develop their own.

Enjoy the game.  It is the best game I have played.

Edited May 17, 2019 by peteloud

[Admin]

Congratulations on reaching the 1,000-day milestone. 

[ManicManiac]

Good strategies, good observations... Congratulations on the long and successful run.

[hozz1235]

Grats!  Are you setting your bow over the mantle (retiring this character)?

[LilWolf]

Nice suggestions, I agree with you about your point of view of the game.

[selfless]

Have you noticed any decay on things like newspaper or ammo?  Raph recently stated he thought everything in the game had decay but some might be set to take 10,000 cycles to disappear.  After 1,000 days you'd think such an effect might start to be noticeable.

[peteloud]

11 hours ago, selfless said:

Have you noticed any decay on things like newspaper or ammo?  . . .

I don't pay much attention to the condition of some items, like newspaper and ammo.  The deterioration of bedrolls caused me great problems when all the bedrolls I found in HRV were ruined and unusable.  I pay attention to condition of my clothes and try to keep it high.

The condition of meat, raw and cooked, is an issue that I think is not right.  Raw meat, whatever the condition, including ruined, can be cooked and made edible.  Cooked meat, and other foods, whatever the condition can be eaten.  There should be a point at which meat becomes inedible, or its food value reduced.

 

[ajb1978]

15 hours ago, selfless said:

Have you noticed any decay on things like newspaper or ammo?  Raph recently stated he thought everything in the game had decay but some might be set to take 10,000 cycles to disappear.  After 1,000 days you'd think such an effect might start to be noticeable.

I currently have a run that's close to day 1400 that I retired (not deleted, just...stopped playing) so that I could start over for Steadfast Ranger.  I hadn't been keeping tabs on matches, but I have noticed that none of the firewood items decay at all.  Newsprint etc. were all still at 100%.  Edit: Ammo too stays at 100%, with the exception of arrows that as we know decay with each use.  I've had several pills decay to 0%, and my backup clothes slowly disintegrate while in storage.  So every 50 or so game days I'd check my cabinets and repair anything that had dropped below 50%.

I get it, it's done with the intention of presenting a degree of resource management, and not to be realistic...but that one always bugged the hell out of me.  Sitting outside, I get it, totally exposed to the elements it'll wear down.  Even sitting on a table indoors, over time, yeah sure solar damage, same as outside it would just take a LOT longer.  But clothes just do not randomly disintegrate when folded neatly in a drawer in the middle of winter.

Edited May 19, 2019 by ajb1978

[UpUpAway95]

59 minutes ago, ajb1978 said:

I currently have a run that's close to day 1400 that I retired (not deleted, just...stopped playing) so that I could start over for Steadfast Ranger.  I hadn't been keeping tabs on matches, but I have noticed that none of the firewood items decay at all.  Newsprint etc. were all still at 100%.  Edit: Ammo too stays at 100%, with the exception of arrows that as we know decay with each use.  I've had several pills decay to 0%, and my backup clothes slowly disintegrate while in storage.  So every 50 or so game days I'd check my cabinets and repair anything that had dropped below 50%.

I get it, it's done with the intention of presenting a degree of resource management, and not to be realistic...but that one always bugged the hell out of me.  Sitting outside, I get it, totally exposed to the elements it'll wear down.  Even sitting on a table indoors, over time, yeah sure solar damage, same as outside it would just take a LOT longer.  But clothes just do not randomly disintegrate when folded neatly in a drawer in the middle of winter.

Depends on the type of fiber.  Natural cloths (e.g. cotton) do disintegrate (get brittle) over time even when stored in drawers.  Elastics are notorious for losing their elasticity fairly rapidly.  Mold growth could also be a factor and some species of mold can grow at temperatures as low as 0 degrees C.

[UpUpAway95]

Congrats on the 1,000-day run!

[ajb1978]

1 hour ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Depends on the type of fiber.  Natural cloths (e.g. cotton) do disintegrate (get brittle) over time even when stored in drawers.  Elastics are notorious for losing their elasticity fairly rapidly.  Mold growth could also be a factor and some species of mold can grow at temperatures as low as 0 degrees C.

Over decades yes...not over months.  I've got one really nice suit that I only wear on special occasions, and it otherwise lives in the closet.  It's 15 years old, looks as new as the day it was bought.  But if this were Great Bear, it'd be a pile of scraps by now!

[UpUpAway95]

36 minutes ago, ajb1978 said:

Over decades yes...not over months.  I've got one really nice suit that I only wear on special occasions, and it otherwise lives in the closet.  It's 15 years old, looks as new as the day it was bought.  But if this were Great Bear, it'd be a pile of scraps by now!

Dry or moist climate?  Temperature variance inside your home?  How well your drawers are sealed?  In Great Bear, the climate is quite humid.  With the home heating turned off, the temperature inside those homes would vary just as much as the weather outside, and I would think mold (which can start to grow at 0 degrees C) could be a real prolbem in those homes.  In addition, dressers and containers may have direct sunlight hitting them through windows at certain times of the day... causing the termperature to rise inside the container higher than the temperature outside it.  I agree that the process is accelerated over real life, but not by as much as you're thinking.  Without any mold, I've had elastic waistbands in kids clothing sitting in drawers go brittle within 2 to 3 years, not decades.

Edited May 19, 2019 by UpUpAway95

[russoft]

Wow! 1000 days. I died of boredom at day 100 and leaped off a bridge. You were smart to find new challenges in the current game to keep you going!

[peteloud]

10 hours ago, russoft said:

Wow! 1000 days. I died of boredom at day 100 and leaped off a bridge. You were smart to find new challenges in the current game to keep you going!

I think that a great strength of the game is that a player can create endless personal challenges.  My favourite is the complete mapping of a region, or all regions.  That challenge can be superimposed on any game, any level or run alongside any other challenge. 

One challenge I recently set myself was to make a large number of arrowheads very early in the game.  I use the bow not the rifle and wanted to spread the arrowheads around the whole territory. I started in Desolate Point, but I couldn't find a heavy hammer, so that become another challenge which had to be complete before the the forging. That in itself was a problem that took a great many days.  Eventually I found a hammer and made 137 arrow heads which made the rest of the game easier.  With this latest 1,000 day game I considered continuing and making 500 or 1,000 arrowheads, but I think that I have used up all of the birch saplings so I wouldn't be able to use the arrowheads.

These subsidiary personal challenges can be anything, it doesn't matter, they just push you to travel around exploring, hunting bears & moose and fighting off wolves.  Of course, if exploring the regions, surviving and hunting bears & moose for their skins bores you then it is not for you.  Have a Pilgrim game up to 100 days with the help of Whiteberry maps then move on to another game that suits you.

Edited May 21, 2019 by peteloud

[GothSkunk]

Well done!

Now do it again. On Stalker. >:)