Survival ideas that could be incorporated


tangledman

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I am really enjoying playing The Long Dark. I think there are quite a lot of survival elements that could be added to the game:

  1. Bow drill - It's very hard to get this to work in ideal conditions!
  2. Charcloth - Charcloth really aids firelighting in the wilderness. It's made by charing cloth in a tin. 
  3. Pine resin - Natural accelerant and also a glue.
  4. Sphagnum moss - A natural wound dressing. 
  5. Horseshoe mushrooms to carry embers
  6. Moss on the north side of trees to aid navigation
  7. Figure "4" deadfall trap (baited with rosehip). 
  8. Pine tea 
  9.  Sharpening stones


It would be nice to see additional wildlife.

Beavers - Excellent for fur and oil.
Squirrels 

 

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We do have sharpening stones and while it's not pine tea, birch bark can be used as a renewable tea source.

The one thing on this list I would like to see is that bow drill.  We don't really need more ways to make firestarting easier because you can already pretty much guarantee yourself 1 fire per match.  Just use that match to light a torch, then you can have however many attempts it takes to get that fire started.  I like to avoid using matches though, so I (and I think most players) tend to prefer the mag lens.  Start a fire on a sunny day, and do all your cooking and boiling.  But that does strike me as a bit of an exploit, since in reality that water and meat should freeze solid and become inedible until thawed.  This would re-introduce a need to start a fire every time you prepare your meal, unless you take to keeping a day's rations under your clothes to thaw them with body heat.  Which would manifest as a penalty to the "Feels Like".

But that's a lot of extra engineering that a bow drill would solve simply by rendering marathon cooking sessions irrelevant.  If I had a renewable firestarter that works indoors any time of the day or night, even at a lower chance of success (say -50% chance, meaning it might take even a master a few attempts), I would absolutely start using that all the time.  Cook what I need, when I need it, rather than spend 24 hours straight grilling a moose and boiling a lake.

Edited by ajb1978
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  • 4 weeks later...

You have whetstones...but when they run out, what about natural ones? 

Also flint arrow heads, fixed to arrow shafts with the aforementioned pine pitch glue

Using fire rather than workbenchs is a more appropriate crafting location for arrows. Primitive arrows were made by the fire. The flights were also glued to the arrowshaft.
 


 

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On 5/28/2020 at 10:54 AM, IverP said:

Yes, I agree on the Bow Drill. There are a lot of matches laying around, but how do you start a fire if you use them all, or foolishly leave them behind? 

Magnifying glass.

ALso use a match to light a torch then licht a fire...no chance of failure and using another match.

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A bow drill ( friction fire ) was indeed present in the original roadmap for the game, though I'm not sure if it still has any relevance to how the devs approach the game nowadays.

I love the maglens and use it almost exclusively to make my fires, specially after you get decent crafted clothing and are able to easily warm up in caves. However, a way to make friction fire would be an awesome addition to the game. Yes you can pretty much wait out for a couple days, in any region and any difficulty and have a small time window where the sky is clear and the sun shining to get that maglens fire and harvest that bear or moose, but it'd be awesome if it was possible for your survivor to turn into a complete badass and survive from natural sourced materials and clothing(already possible) only. 

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On 5/27/2020 at 11:00 AM, tangledman said:


I am really enjoying playing The Long Dark. I think there are quite a lot of survival elements that could be added to the game:

  1. Bow drill - It's very hard to get this to work in ideal conditions!
  2. Charcloth - Charcloth really aids firelighting in the wilderness. It's made by charing cloth in a tin. 
  3. Pine resin - Natural accelerant and also a glue.
  4. Sphagnum moss - A natural wound dressing. 
  5. Horseshoe mushrooms to carry embers
  6. Moss on the north side of trees to aid navigation
  7. Figure "4" deadfall trap (baited with rosehip). 
  8. Pine tea 
  9.  Sharpening stones


It would be nice to see additional wildlife.

Beavers - Excellent for fur and oil.
Squirrels 

 

I like you ideas, being able to craft a bow drill whould be a nice thing. I feel like the charcloth is a little bit useless bc at level 3 of fire skills you do not need anymore any kind of tinder to light your fire. The idea of the mushroom that can carry embers is a little bit in contradiction with the bowdrill idea i would prefer to see only one of em being developped bc the long dark has to stay a difficult game (i have a little preference for the mushroom)

The idea of adding beavers is just amazing i would really like to see that. The devs added a rabitskin hat but i feel like a beaverhat would be 100% more badass

 

Sharpening stones already exists i hope you did not died beacause you didnt knew that xD

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have been thinking about bow or hand drill and also your character should have level 5 fire starting skill before you can use it, so you need to start fires with matches and strikers before that. Gunbowder could be used with drill to make it easier to light a fire and even then percent could be like 90 % succesfull. You also shouldn't be able to start a fire in wet conditions while snowing or if it's too windy with drill.

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On 5/29/2020 at 2:09 AM, ajb1978 said:

We do have sharpening stones

I'm going to make assumptions here but I think they mean renewable ones. Like river stones, as mentioned in the DP factory's guide to sharpening blades. I agree, we need renewable sharpening stones. Even if they were single-use or 5-time use or something minuscule I believe we should have them.

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