Facilitate longevity - advice for the nonchaloping mind

[manolitode]

There are obviously a lot of human behavior that can ruin a perfect game, such as tiredness, boozing and cats that unpause your game while you're out buying groceries. After recently going through a handful of early deaths in interloper I'll share two conclusions that though likely mentioned before are well worth repeating to help facilitate your longevity. They're from a psychological perspective rather than gameplay tactics and they're currently helping me stay alive. 

1) Success will kill you. If the weather is unusually warm, the wolf patrols are absent and most things have been going your way for an ingame day or two, you run the risk of becoming too relaxed. When you're too relaxed you start taking risks and make mistakes. As you already know by now, one mistake is enough to fade into the sudden long dark. Take a break from the game, whether it's 10 minutes or 10 days, and come back with a fresh cautious mind that won't let you do stuff to ruin an otherwise perfect run. 

2) Zoning out will kill you. This tend to happen when you're on a long journey or when the game becomes too easy as mentioned above. The problem is that when you're doing some deep contemplation on what your boss told you during appraisals or plan your weekend with your partner as you play you know that Mr. Wolf will jump out from behind a stone or a corner and there you go, thanks for playing. Again, take a break, plan your weekend or whatever, then get back to the game and voila, 100, 500 or 1000 hours wasn't wasted after all. 

What do you do to remain alert, do you lock yourself in to avoid distractions or are you just a natural multitasker? I'd like to hear the tips and tricks that help you stay sharp in your long run.

Edited February 14, 2020 by manolitode

[GothSkunk]

Well I live alone, and I don't fall asleep until sunrise, so I rarely have a problem when I'm playing TLD. I never get distracted. Best thing I find is to have a goal in mind. For me, this goal was most recently to collect all 71 buffer memories in the game. Took me 719 in-game days to do it, and I started in April or May of 2019, I don't remember which.

Now that I'm done, the goal is to finally explore and map the Hushed River Valley for the first time ever. It's exciting because I've never been there before until just a few days ago, so it's all brand new to me. But, it's also scary because condition recovery takes so long if I get injured, that a bad run-in with wolves will keep me confined to the cave I'm using for shelter until I can properly recover. I could run out of food before I'm 110%, and be compelled to go hunting in bad condition, risking more confrontations with wolves or bear.

If somehow I manage to fully explore the hushed river valley, then that just leaves the Bleak Inlet. And while that sounds potentially exciting, my experience in WIntermute told me I'm terrible with dealing with Timberwolves. And, condition recovery being what it is, I am quite confident that, if I do die, it will be because of Timberwolves in the Bleak Inlet.

 

But yeah, best advice I can give is to have a goal in mind, something to work towards. For me, that was collecting all the buffer memories.

[Jimmy]

For me, my best tip is to develop healthy habits.

Habits like creating fuel and food caches across the maps, or emptying your inventory whenever you reach a central base, will improve your survival skills. There's no point wasting time and calories hauling junk you don't need.

As much as we enjoy blaming a wolf for our demise, it's often due to our own poor planning that we end up dead. Make it a habit to stick to safe routes when crossing the map, or be prepared for a wolf encounter with a torch in hand to start up a quick safety fire.

Having any level of scent is a quick way to end up wolf feed. Make it a habit to drop any meat, fish or gut at the earliest opportunity to avoid dragging every fluffy demon on the map to your location. When harvesting, take one piece of meat at a time and drop it before continuing to harvest.

And finally, as counter-intuitive as it is, make it a habit to start new games with the intention of dying. If there's a map you're not familiar with, or you want to develop your wolf baiting and hunting skills, make a throw-away game to experiment so you don't have to worry about death ending your hundred day Interloper file.

[manolitode]

On 2/15/2020 at 5:33 AM, GothSkunk said:

Well I live alone, and I don't fall asleep until sunrise, so I rarely have a problem when I'm playing TLD. I never get distracted. Best thing I find is to have a goal in mind. For me, this goal was most recently to collect all 71 buffer memories in the game. Took me 719 in-game days to do it, and I started in April or May of 2019, I don't remember which.

Now that I'm done, the goal is to finally explore and map the Hushed River Valley for the first time ever. It's exciting because I've never been there before until just a few days ago, so it's all brand new to me. 

But yeah, best advice I can give is to have a goal in mind, something to work towards. For me, that was collecting all the buffer memories.

Way to go! You obviously know how to plan for a long run and stay alive. Goals are helpful indeed, keeps me motivated and efficient. I like to have a main goal with the total run (like stay alive longer than ever Before), a handful of semibig goals (such as emptying regions or crafting a moose cape before day 30) and one or a couple of goals for each playing session. 

Ah, how exciting good luck with HRV, let the rivers be your Compass :) 

On 2/15/2020 at 6:44 AM, Jimmy said:

Habits like creating fuel and food caches across the maps, or emptying your inventory whenever you reach a central base, will improve your survival skills. There's no point wasting time and calories hauling junk you don't need.

As much as we enjoy blaming a wolf for our demise, it's often due to our own poor planning that we end up dead. Make it a habit to stick to safe routes when crossing the map, or be prepared for a wolf encounter with a torch in hand to start up a quick safety fire.

To spread resources to make a backup plan for future emergencies is a very well-functioning strategy. You're right that one can avoid wolves at most times by knowing patrols. But sometimes we're just out of control, if you consider these situations: You get lost in the heavy fog on the marshes of FM so you lost grasp of possible closeby wolf locations. However, you may be able to make that fire in case of an attack. Or, you've just goated down TWM on a heavy snowy night. You got sprains, 10% hp and you're cold. So you deploy the emergency stim in your vein, the night goes discobass so you can't see nothing but you run towards what you think is the cabin even though you know you might cross a wolf's path. 

On 2/15/2020 at 6:44 AM, Jimmy said:

And finally, as counter-intuitive as it is, make it a habit to start new games with the intention of dying. If there's a map you're not familiar with, or you want to develop your wolf baiting and hunting skills, make a throw-away game to experiment so you don't have to worry about death ending your hundred day Interloper file.

That's a very helpful approach to prevent disappointment. For me it works best to play with the mindset of surviving and how to be better than last run. Even if I die, it's been a while since I got upset, the first 1-2 years were worse 😃