What aspect of The Long Dark do you struggle with the most?


ManicManiac

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Not being greedy.

Old school aRPG/RPG fan here.
I am in the habit of "Grab it all and sort it all out later! Keep the good stuff, and toss or sell the rest!"

The Long Dark really forces me to manage things more efficiently, think about what I am doing, and what consequences it may have later in the game, rather than just hacking and slashing my way through the world. Not a bad thing, just... old habits can be very hard to break. 

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Knowing when to use a finite resource.  I am....very miserly.  I break down everything I can by hand, to spare tool use.  I forego sewing kits in favor of fishing tackle, only using tackle for actual fishing when it reaches the breakage threshold from sewing use.  I hoard coal and burn sticks.  I gather as much ammo as I can...and shoot as infrequently as I can get away with.  Edit: For example, why shoot that deer, when I can chase it into a wolf, shoot the wolf, and harvest both.  Why bother with either of them if I can shoot a bear.  etc.

I'm very much the kind of gamer who saves all his potions for an emergency, and finishes the game with an inventory full of unused potions.

Edited by ajb1978
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Not going back and settle in the Trapper's Cabin. This place is so cozy and convenient. I never get tired to see these lit windows at dusk when I come back of a long hunting day.

Each time a start a new game, I tell myself that I'll try something else, have a more nomadic playstyle or settle elsewhere. But each and every single time, I wander for 10, 20, 30 days here and there, trying to settle in various place but each time, I just don't feel like home. Inevitably, I find myself being slowly moving toward the Trapper Cabin, until the point that I am suddenly walking in that little field around the Cabin, thinking "Home, at last!".

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On 5/23/2019 at 1:11 AM, ajb1978 said:

Knowing when to use a finite resource.  I am....very miserly.  I break down everything I can by hand, to spare tool use.  I forego sewing kits in favor of fishing tackle, only using tackle for actual fishing when it reaches the breakage threshold from sewing use.  I hoard coal and burn sticks.  I gather as much ammo as I can...and shoot as infrequently as I can get away with.  Edit: For example, why shoot that deer, when I can chase it into a wolf, shoot the wolf, and harvest both.  Why bother with either of them if I can shoot a bear.  etc.

I'm very much the kind of gamer who saves all his potions for an emergency, and finishes the game with an inventory full of unused potions.

This is me!!!

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On 5/22/2019 at 9:15 PM, ThePancakeLady said:

Not being greedy.

Old school aRPG/RPG fan here.
I am in the habit of "Grab it all and sort it all out later! Keep the good stuff, and toss or sell the rest!"

The Long Dark really forces me to manage things more efficiently, think about what I am doing, and what consequences it may have later in the game, rather than just hacking and slashing my way through the world. Not a bad thing, just... old habits can be very hard to break. 

Same here.  Unfortunately, I was unable to fully enjoy the game while trying to break my old habit so I use a weight-management mod.  I know....bring on the haters about how I'm making the game too easy/not meant to be played this way, etc.  I manage to augment in other ways to make it challenging for me.

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On 5/22/2019 at 10:11 PM, ajb1978 said:

Knowing when to use a finite resource.  I am....very miserly.  I break down everything I can by hand, to spare tool use.  I forego sewing kits in favor of fishing tackle, only using tackle for actual fishing when it reaches the breakage threshold from sewing use.  I hoard coal and burn sticks.  I gather as much ammo as I can...and shoot as infrequently as I can get away with.  Edit: For example, why shoot that deer, when I can chase it into a wolf, shoot the wolf, and harvest both.  Why bother with either of them if I can shoot a bear.  etc.

I'm very much the kind of gamer who saves all his potions for an emergency, and finishes the game with an inventory full of unused potions.

Me too, but not quite to that degree!  I have come to realize that I will never run out of resources (at least not before getting 100% bored with that save) so I have started to use my resources again ("Hmm...knife or hand to harvest this deer?  What the heck, let's use this knife which is 4x faster")

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The overabundance of (mostly) animal resources, honestly. There are simply too many animals for there to ever be a threat of starvation, especially wolves. Wolves are extra bad because they provide home delivery.

If we had maybe 10% of the wolves and maybe a third of the rest of the animals the game could be better for me. I have never fished in this game, not once. I've never had a reason to because of the unlimited mountains of meat that run up to me.

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1 hour ago, odizzido said:

The overabundance of (mostly) animal resources, honestly. There are simply too many animals for there to ever be a threat of starvation, especially wolves. Wolves are extra bad because they provide home delivery.

If we had maybe 10% of the wolves and maybe a third of the rest of the animals the game could be better for me. I have never fished in this game, not once. I've never had a reason to because of the unlimited mountains of meat that run up to me.

Custom settings, my friend!

Put all the animal populations on Low, all the animal awareness/detection settings on maximum, and the Wolf Fear setting on High (this makes them run away from you quite often, which makes them more unpredictable and harder to hunt). If you combine this with low general loot settings, and also highest rates of calorie burn, you will find that you don't always have enough food, especially in the early game. You still might not find it useful to fish if their populations are set to 'Low' as well, since like that you might only be able to catch 2 or 3 fish in an entire day - that's still a calorie profit (a small one), but you will have to spend a lot of time (and calories) collecting enough firewood to do it safely, which often puts you back into the red.

I think what I struggle with the most is remembering where I've put stuff, or getting distracted while out exploring, and then running into trouble because I end up too far away from the safety of my home base and my provisions.

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2 minutes ago, Pillock said:

Custom settings, my friend!

I already do play custom with low animal settings....they're still far far too high. I don't play with high calorie burn though, because even on the lower settings for that you have to eat like an entire wolf every day which is completely ridiculous. What I really want is for wolves to be rare and more dangerous if you fight them, but also for them to provide food for a longer amount of time. I want to not find food for a few days, and that one wolf I killed to be running out, my snares to be empty, and me deciding to go fishing but put that on hold because there is a deer that I just found which is a rare and bountiful find. Currently it's just like, oh, more deer. I eat multiple deer every week.

 

Anyways when I finally start modding this game I will do a lot of that. Hopefully it won't be too big of a pain to do it(I very much want good modding support).

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3 minutes ago, odizzido said:

I already do play custom with low animal settings....they're still far far too high. I don't play with high calorie burn though, because even on the lower settings for that you have to eat like an entire wolf every day which is completely ridiculous.

Yeah, I get that and I agree.

But I've managed to forget/get past that niggling unintuitive aspect, and it has the advantage of putting the challenge back into survival in a big way (I also have maximum rates of thirst, freezing and fatigue). The quest for food is really what drives everything in the game in terms of making survival challenging. If you got food, you don't need to go out and expose yourself to any danger; if you don't have food, suddenly you have to start exploring, traveling further, exposing yourself to the cold and to dangerous animals, to getting lost in a fog or a blizzard, and to finding yourself out in the boonies with nowhere safe to sleep, and to consuming much more of your more valuable resources. If you're finding the game too easy, you've really got to make calories harder to come by and maintain. Everything else follows from that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have two struggles: taking less gear with me to start the day, and hearing wolves.  I have been jumped from behind a hill several times in my most recent game despite listening for them.  I don’t know why I keep missing the auditory cues but think wolf and bear subtitles a great idea, and make the game more accessible for the hearing impaired.

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1 hour ago, FrozenCorpse said:

Cuz HH is one of the fastest ways to get a critter off you with minimal clothing damage...?  Least it was, at one time .. I think.. (heck, idk...).

Yeah, it still is, I think. It's just it weighs a heck of a lot and isn't useful for much else (if you've got a hatchet).

Now we've got the revolver, it's become a lot less attractive as an anti-wolf weapon.

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