Hushed River, why do you like it?

[piddy3825]

I honestly haven't spent very much time exploring Hushed River since the region was introduced.  All though I've explored it a few times, it's one of those maps where almost every turn looks familiar and surviving there really seems to test my skills.  Fortunately the developers were gracious enough to include a good number of caves and caches that provided a fair amount of food, tools and weapons. 

Besides finding your way to the top of the cliff and discovering the mysterious signal fire and subsequently the moose satchel, what else keeps you in the area?  

[Serenity]

HRV has several distinct sub regions. It's not really too difficult to find your way around when you divide into smaller parts and tackle them one by one.

There are tons of natural resources there. You can survive for a long time on the cat tails alone. No caches or man made stuff needed. That's what separates it from TWM, which still has a hut and lots of goodies in the containers

[UpUpAway95]

A lot of the time, I don't like it at all.  It depends mostly on the weather I'm getting while there and how many times my plans for getting around get thwarted by sprains.  When things are going well, it's a fun outdoors zone that doesn't involve raiding people's homes to survive.  When things are going badly... it's frequently the zone that ends my run.

[Stone]

I love Monolith lake, making camp at Watchful falls cave. It's the open and wild. But it's a long horrible journey there. So when I start feeling a bit safe and comfortable in Mystery Lake, I tool up and set off for a holiday at Monolith lake, until I once again long for the cosy workbench in the camp office.

[piddy3825]

@Serenity, @UpUpAway95, @Stone,

appreciate your comments!  I got a love hate relationship with that map...  typically the weather just kicks my ass, but yeah, the bounty is plentiful.  I do however so miss not having a crafting bench...  my last play through I launched a new game and randomly spawned in Hushed River, but ironically right by the mouth of the cave entrance that transitions to Mountain Town.  When the irony struck me, I decided to head in and make a go of it.  While battling an ongoing  blizzard and darting from cave to cave and taking a chance on warming up I entered an ice cave.  It was like a supermarket in there...  somehow ended up on the other side, geared up, fed and well rested.  next thing i know i am chopping my way up a precipitous path and finally find that mysterious signal fire.  After that, finding anything else seemed anticlimactic.  Once I started working my way  back down to familiar ground, I just made a bee line for the exit and didnt stop walking til I got back to Milton, lol.

 

 

[Jimmy]

For an Interloper player, Hushed River Valley offers the opportunity for some guaranteed pieces of rare non-craftable gear. For this fact, it's a great location to visit once you've forged basic equipment.

Plus, the level design is just spectacular. It's one of the most recent additions to the game, and the Hinterland team outdid themselves creating the map. The region has a unique flavor found nowhere else in the game, and as others have said, it actually becomes several sub-regions due to the layout. Compared to the far more linear maps such as Desolation Point, this region gives a variety of routes to traverse the terrain, along with dozens of small diversions to take you off the beaten track and reward your wandering.

There's plenty of unique features in this map to surprise even the veteran player, and it's definitely worthwhile spending a few weeks of any game to explore this natural wonderland.

[Serenity]

Yeah, I really like the options. You have a choice between quick ropes that will exhaust you. Warm ice caves that may drench you in cold water of contain a wolf. Or a longer walk that will leave you cold. Even TWM is far more linear with the available routes.

And you can live like a king in HRV. That's probably at least 70 cat tails. From the first area alone

 

It's one of the colder regions, but blizzards aren't there more blizzards there than elsewhere. With some of the best clothing available you can be warm or only arrow down. If you struggle with the cold you'll have more issues. In that case your best bet is using the ice caves. They cover a huge part of the map

[ManicManiac]

6 minutes ago, DerpyLemon115 said:

I like getting lost in it. Not sure why but I actually enjoy getting lost in games. Maybe because i'm just weird...

I think exploration is among the most exciting things that a human can do... part of the reason our species constantly does it.   

[piddy3825]

1 hour ago, DerpyLemon115 said:

I like getting lost in it. Not sure why but I actually enjoy getting lost in games. Maybe because i'm just weird...

Yeah,  there's a certain allure to that in a game and this one certainly does bring that to the table.  When ever I enter this map, I feel lost from the moment I get started.

[Stone]

Seconded @Jimmy, it is some first rate level design. they get lots of level out of the space. The wolf threat however puts me off some nice bits of it. I'd like another 'wild' map that's flatter and forested. Full of the fallen trees, rocky outcrops and brush that feature in HRV but with few ropes and warm caves. A place where you need to build your own shelter. Somewhere fully commiting with no where to fall back to. And less wolves 😄

[turtle777]

On 9/23/2019 at 11:36 AM, Stone said:

 The wolf threat however puts me off some nice bits of it. .... And less wolves 😄

I don’t think HRV is bad in terms of wolves. They are typically contained to certain areas that can be avoided. Once you clear the wolf in the river section, the river is like a highway connecting you to many places. The on/off ramps are fallen trees, caves and ropes.

Once you know your way around, you can travel to most places with limited risk of running into wolves. The only curve ball is the occasional wolf spawning in the ice cave. That can be a nasty surprise. 😁

 

-t

[Looper]

On 9/11/2019 at 5:08 AM, piddy3825 said:

I honestly haven't spent very much time exploring Hushed River since the region was introduced.  All though I've explored it a few times, it's one of those maps where almost every turn looks familiar and surviving there really seems to test my skills.  Fortunately the developers were gracious enough to include a good number of caves and caches that provided a fair amount of food, tools and weapons. 

Besides finding your way to the top of the cliff and discovering the mysterious signal fire and subsequently the moose satchel, what else keeps you in the area?  

Rationally there's no reason to go to HRV. It has practically nothing that the other regions don't have better.  

I would wish that it was a transition region to another urban zone or that the region had some kind of unique ressource. Otherwise it seems kind of stupid to go there. The most unique ressources in Loper play are ...well... wetstones (😄) and not much chance to find that. Of course it could be argued that sapplings should be harvested but in late game it's just pushing the inevitable survival without the bow a little and not worth the hassle. 

It was one of the things asked for by the community but to me it lacks real in-game purpose.  

[piddy3825]

5 hours ago, Looper said:

Rationally there's no reason to go to HRV. It has practically nothing that the other regions don't have better.  

I would wish that it was a transition region to another urban zone or that the region had some kind of unique ressource. Otherwise it seems kind of stupid to go there. The most unique ressources in Loper play are ...well... wetstones (😄) and not much chance to find that. Of course it could be argued that sapplings should be harvested but in late game it's just pushing the inevitable survival without the bow a little and not worth the hassle. 

It was one of the things asked for by the community but to me it lacks real in-game purpose.  

couldn't agree more.  Maybe if it connected to another region and you had to use to transition to that area it might have greater appeal, but the complete lack of fishing spots and the lack of ability to craft clothing makes it less inviting or even relevant to the game or story line.

[RegentRelic]

I think in the long game it better the more regions you have in general. Plus hushed river valley has the late game bonus of years worth of saplings even in interloper.

Edited October 2, 2019 by RegentRelic

[Serenity]

There is quite some stuff there. Not that you really need another heavy hammer or hacksaw at that point. I also found a whetstone. If you need to stock up on plants it has everything. Saplings, reshis and lots of rose hips (which aren't that useful these days though).

Food wise it's really easy to survive. So many cat tails.

Otherwise it's like with mountains. You go there because it's there

[jhickie]

Why do I like HRV? What's not to like?! I love this region. Wild regions like TWM, FM, and HRV used to always give me trouble, but as I've gotten better over the years I've really become fond of them. Especially HRV.

It's a remote, wild place, and at first glance it looks barren. But, that's just an illusion. It can actually be quite comfortable, and is absolutely loaded with resources. I've been playing a personal challenge on Loper where I have to spend 50 days in each region and completely clear each region of all non-renewable resources. So, all cattails, mushrooms, rosehips, old man's beard, and cloth. I'm leaving metal and wood for when I need them, but clearing a bunch of metal out too. HRV has a ridiculous amount of cattails. After completing my 50 days stint there recently, I came away with well over 200. So many mushrooms and rosehips as well. I would go about 10 days, load up with as much as I could carry, and trek back to the trailer in MT. Wash, rinse, repeat. That trailer was absolutely full of gear and skins by the time I reached 50 days. 

After my 50 days, I found a total of 4 boxes of matches, as well as a bedroll, 2 hacksaws, hammer, lantern, 2 prybars, simple tools, several granola bars and canned goods, 4 candy bars, a couple boxes of crackers, a bunch of saplings, a whetstone, 2 cooking pots, several unneeded articles of clothing, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. HRV has the 2 ice cave networks, which are great home bases once the wolf is cleared out, as well as many 2-layer (outdoor) caves. There's endless fuel in the form of multiple coal spawns and endless sticks. There's also several ravaged wolf carcasses, and if you're lucky, a ravaged moose carcass!

HRV is best tackled in sections. The Stairsteps Lake area and the adjacent high basin (bear hunting), the Hushed River itself (cave w/ guaranteed match spawn), the Lower Basin (possible moose), the hilly area north of the river, and the greater Monolith Lake area (possible moose). I would set up a temp base in a section, hunt it clean, clear it out of all non-renewables, stock my temp base with meat/fuel/water, rest up and move out to the next section. After I cleared the whole place out and had several temp bases stocked, I would consolidate and haul stuff back to the MT trailer. There's just too much good stuff here.

In short, HRV has tons of resources and can be lived in almost indefinitely. It's a very underrated Loper spawn. One of my favorite regions. 

[peteloud]

I have recently returned to HRV in a Stalker game at 750+ days and I find it stressful.    I seem to have picked up most of the birch saplings in other areas so needed to go there to search for birch saplings for arrows. 

 

I had a pleasant surprise, a rare occurrence in HRV at Stalker.  I normally travel around HRV in a clockwise direction from the entrance cave so that I can provision a couple of the caves that I use as bases.  This time I changed my routine, went straight ahead then climbed the first rope that I found.  In the past I'd always been overloaded when I found that rope so didn't climb it.  Then in no time at all I found the moose backpack.  In the past finding that quite a problem.

 

This is one of the clever aspects of this game.  I have played a great many games days and feel that I know most regions, but I still have surprises and find obvious things that I have missed in previous games.

[peteloud]

I have just had a strange incident in HRV.  It is a 800 days Stalker game.

I was wandering around HRV looking for birch saplings and stopped at the cave in the top left corner of the map.  While there the local bear appeared.  I shot him with an arrow when he was still quite distant.  I hit and he ran off to bleed out.  I slept for 4 hours then went out look for the carcass.  I made a point of leaving my standard bedroll, 90+% condition in the cave because it was the only bedroll I had in HRV and didn't want to risk it being damaged or destroyed if I was attacked by a wolf. 

I found the bear took his hide and a reasonable load of meat then started to return.  A wolf sprang on me, without any significant warning and chewed me up a bit.  As I walked back to the cave I thought that I'd better check that I wasn't carrying my bedroll, sure enough I was not.

When I got back to the cave my bedroll was lying on the cave floor as expected.  But it was completely ruined.    Only an hour or two before it was well over 90% condition, and it hadn't left the cave.

 

[piddy3825]

22 hours ago, peteloud said:

When I got back to the cave my bedroll was lying on the cave floor as expected.  But it was completely ruined.    Only an hour or two before it was well over 90% condition, and it hadn't left the cave.

 

I've had that happen to me before as well, but not on Stalker level.  The instant degradation of recently dropped items has got to be a glitch.  just another reason for me to avoid HRV...

[Lancja]

you made me want to go there

[piddy3825]

9 hours ago, Lancja said:

you made me want to go there

at  the very least once, for a quick look around.  it's seems to be so much easier once you have some good gear and equipment.  good luck @Lancja!

 

[RegentRelic]

Just don't keep an eye on the ground immediately in front of you in the fog. It has a way of disappearing.

Edited October 8, 2019 by RegentRelic

[MarrowStone]

On 10/8/2019 at 8:27 AM, RegentRelic said:

Just don't keep an eye on the ground immediately in front of you in the fog. It has a way of disappearing.

Walking off cliffs?