In-world markers

[Morrick]

Navigating The Long Dark's world is rudimentary by design. As you know well, unlike other games you don't have a full interactive map with a convenient highlighted marker indicating your current position. A compass is also out of the question because — given that the event originating the apocalypse is a geomagnetic storm — a compass would hardly prove reliable. I'm fine with the idea of surveying the area you're in and using charcoal to sketch a map as you go along. It fits the situation. 

But I was trying to remember my first attempts at playing the game, back when I hadn't discovered the famous whitɘberry maps, and when I also hadn't discovered that you could use charcoal to map a region. I moved around in this unknown land and tried to orient myself visually. After finding shelter in a man-made structure, I remember venturing out to explore a bit, but not too far because I hated the idea of, say, getting caught in bad weather and not having a shelter nearby, or losing myself trying to get my bearings, etc.

I remember thinking, It would be great if I could place some kind of marker here.

In-world markers (like piles of stones, or pieces of wood planted in the ground) could serve different purposes. You could use them to mark how far you've gone in a region. Or you could use them to remind you of the exact spot you need to reach to access certain areas. Experienced or frequent players will probably scoff, but think about novices or simply people who don't play the game that often. Speaking for myself, even if by now I know many regions rather well, I still have some difficulty navigating Hushed River Valley, certain parts of Timberwolf Mountain, and even some specific spots in more frequented regions like Mystery Lake (e.g. I always seem to forget the exact entry point to reach the Forestry Lookout). In a region like Forlorn Muskeg, planting a marker near a tricky spot of thin ice would help when you're outdoors and you're caught in dense fog or in a blizzard.

As far as mechanics and implementation go, placing and removing a marker could work in the same way as placing and removing a campfire. The shape of the marker would be fixed (like the campfire), and you could break it down when you don't need it anymore. To avoid making things too easy, placing a marker could require having some reclaimed wood in your inventory.

I realise this isn't a new idea or suggestion, and that it isn't anything very fancy, but I think it could be a relatively useful addition, not extremely hard to implement from a development standpoint (I think), and in line with The Long Dark's approach to navigation.

[Dr. S.]

I use tinder plugs for this. You can drop one for a quick marker or arrange them to form a V or an arrow if you want something more sophisticated. 

[ajb1978]

In the past I have used campfires to mark trails across the ice, particularly at CH where a dense fog can get you turned around in a hurry.  The little wood pile itself has a pretty decent rendering distance, although the ring of stones doesn't appear until you're practically on top of it.

[UpUpAway95]

1 hour ago, Dr. S. said:

I use tinder plugs for this. You can drop one for a quick marker or arrange them to form a V or an arrow if you want something more sophisticated. 

I also mostly use tinder plugs for this.  They are not needed for anything else once the player reaches fire starting 3, can be readily made from sticks if I don't have any on me, and can be placed to make arrows or other symbols to which I can assign a variety of meanings.  I really don't see a need to add a special item just for the purpose of marking trails.

Cattails, stones, and now even the charcoal that people don't want auto-added to their inventories can also be placed in the snow to draw arrows and other symbols to mark locations and trailheads.

Edited December 28, 2019 by UpUpAway95

[Morrick]

Yes, well, I too have used improvised objects as trail markers, like tinder plugs and recycled cans. The problem — for me — is that these items are too small for that purpose. My idea was to have a marker that was bigger and more visible at a distance, without having to scour the ground to locate it. Campfires as trail markers are an interesting solution, though perhaps a bit wasteful (a stick is enough to start a campfire, but unless you're using an already-lit item as fire-starter, or a magnifying lens, you'd waste a match every time).

Sometimes I wish the game let me take and place certain bigger items (like brooms and planks), instead of only giving me the option to break them down.

Anyway, I thought it was a cool addition... 🤷‍♂️

[UpUpAway95]

5 minutes ago, Morrick said:

Yes, well, I too have used improvised objects as trail markers, like tinder plugs and recycled cans. The problem — for me — is that these items are too small for that purpose. My idea was to have a marker that was bigger and more visible at a distance, without having to scour the ground to locate it. Campfires as trail markers are an interesting solution, though perhaps a bit wasteful (a stick is enough to start a campfire, but unless you're using an already-lit item as fire-starter, or a magnifying lens, you'd waste a match every time).

Sometimes I wish the game let me take and place certain bigger items (like brooms and planks), instead of only giving me the option to break them down.

Anyway, I thought it was a cool addition... 🤷‍♂️

The problem I have with allowing the player to just plop down a large marker (like, say, an Inukshuk) is that they don't carry the necessary items in their inventory (which should be weighty) to do so and it should take a fair amount of in-game time (while getting cold, etc.) to construct such a signpost. 

If you want to make a visible trail in all weather, you can do so by dropping a tinder plug every step... for example, from a particular fishing hut to the shore in CH.  This leaves what is clearly a trail you made regardless of how the plugs drop and one that is able to be easily followed no matter how foggy it gets.

[Morrick]

4 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

The problem I have with allowing the player to just plop down a large marker (like, say, an Inukshuk) is that they don't carry the necessary items in their inventory (which should be weighty) to do so and it should take a fair amount of in-game time (while getting cold, etc.) to construct such a signpost. 

I thought I could get away with it, haha! I mean, in the same way you don't have to collect several rocks and logs to make a campfire. In the same way you don't have to go fetch 1-2 kilograms of snow every time you want to make water. I based my idea for a marker on these and other similar shortcuts the game allows you. 

4 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

If you want to make a visible trail in all weather, you can do so by dropping a tinder plug every step... for example, from a particular fishing hut to the shore in CH.  This leaves what is clearly a trail you made regardless of how the plugs drop and one that is able to be easily followed no matter how foggy it gets.

Fair enough. 

[UpUpAway95]

9 minutes ago, Morrick said:

I thought I could get away with it, haha! I mean, in the same way you don't have to collect several rocks and logs to make a campfire. In the same way you don't have to go fetch 1-2 kilograms of snow every time you want to make water. I based my idea for a marker on these and other similar shortcuts the game allows you. 

Fair enough. 

Water and campfires are more in-game necessities than trail markers, though... and you do spend a larger than realistic amount of time chopping up limbs and breaking down branches that, I think, makes up for it.  Trail markers would be purely a luxury.

I thought of another marker you could use that does stand up... snares.  They would likely ruin before you came back to them and would probably be less visible at a distance than campfires; but it is still an option.

[ThePancakeLady]

3 hours ago, Dr. S. said:

I use tinder plugs for this. You can drop one for a quick marker or arrange them to form a V or an arrow if you want something more sophisticated. 

Same. After Lvl 3 Firestarting skill, you don't need tinder plugs, and heck, even before then, sticks and newspapers in the world tend to be plentiful, and I make tinder plugs to pass time after my gal wakes up from sleep, and it's still dark out. So I always have way more tinder plugs than I need. They make great trail markers. Cattail heads, not so much.

So do car batteries. But they are a little less useful for that purpose now that they have weight to them, when right-clicking them to move/place them. 33 lbs is heavy, lol. Tinder plugs weigh almost nothing. Stones work too, a big pile of them, or a line of them on the ice. In a pinch, sticks, arranged into arrows, pointing in the direction of shelter caves or buildings works too. But, i am an obsessive stick collector, I tend to pick up my sticks (markers) and burn them, so... that one doesn't work out too well for me.  Books are larger, and work well too, if you have a lot of them, but they get heavy if trying to carry 10 or so to mark a long trail. And cans of Tomato soup... that red color shows up well on a white snowy background. Not as helpful in Interloper, since you won;t find many, but in Pilgrim or Voyageur, even Stalker- cans of food... eat all but a tiny bit out of them, so they retain the colored labels instead of recycled cans, which can look like regular terrain from a distance, with their grey color. 

Yes, I play with all sorts of silly things in the game. 

[Calico]

I was thinking that when you harvest certain small, brightly colored clothing items like the Wool Scarf or the Fleece Mittens you could could have a choice to either get the standard cloth OR get "tags" (maybe 2x as many tags as you would have gotten cloth). These tags could be combined - via the camp craft menu - with either 1 stick or 3 rocks to make a small vertical marker that would be more prominent than simply dropping an item flat on the ground. They would degrade, but slowly.

You could NOT use tags for anything else - not mending or bandages, so you would have to make judicious choices.

Bonus thought: if you mapped an area AFTER you dropped a tag it would show up on the map, but only after a fresh mapping event, it would not show up automatically.