The Long Dark Hotfixed to V1.78 [62973]

[MrWolf]

3 minutes ago, Gun Tech. said:

This is a reported bug that is well-documented by the TLD streaming community. I've tested out the exact behavior. Or you can test it yourself by killing 3-4 animals at the same time and harvest them without going indoors first. (If you go indoors between animal dying and being harvested you always get zero feathers). If you don't go indoors, you often get feathers from the first animal you harvest and zero feathers from all of the others. This reeks of unintended. (We can't really kill one animal at a time and never go indoors after a kill. Or if we're expected to, it's bad game design.)

I had hopes for the hotfix, knowing that the major update is about added features. But this was tested by me in 1.77, and it was still not fixed. It's not fixed in 1.78 [62973] because it's not in the changelog. 

Interesting, thanks for the info.  I wasn't aware of that issue.  I mostly based my comments on feathers found around existing corpses and carcasses.  I just checked the corpse on the Coastal Highway island near Misanthrope's and there were no feathers.  There were also no crows at the time, so I wonder if that's related... now that I think of it, are we more likely to find feathers if crows are circling?  I don't know that I've seen feathers when there are no crows.  I've been playing this game a long time and never really thought much about that.  It still feels early, I think I need more coffee.

[Gun Tech.]

No, crows were debunked years ago and this has never been a thing. They help you locate a corpse or a carcass in bad visibility if they're up and not outside clipping distance, that's it.

Edited June 4, 2020 by Gun Tech.

[Dr. S.]

That is interesting.

I also haven't noticed anything funny about feathers, but I haven't investigated under the specific circumstances described. I'll keep an eye out.

But also, random numbers are weird, people have faulty memories, and confirmation bias is real. Since we can't see into the black box, it's hard to know what's happening. Having a specific repeatable case like "go inside" -> "always no feathers" is a good thing.

For example, in my current interloper run, I've fished for about 20 hours (in several sessions over the course of three days) and have caught literally zero fish, and have broken zero fishing tackles. Based on my understanding of the fishing mechanism, that shouldn't happen. So is there some circumstance under which fishing is bugged? Or was I just unlucky? It's hard to know. 

[Gun Tech.]

Before the change, which happened around 1.72 ish (I can check) you always got at least 1 feather from harvesting an animal. On Interloper you are heavily dependent on feathers for arrows that you will spend on hunting for meat. If you play another mode, you will never need meat for food nor arrows, and this is why I asked about the mode before.

Fishing sounds like it works as intended, if you have fishing skill 1. Then it can take 20h of fishing to get your first fish, and thereafter a very long time to skill up. Once skilled up, you skill up faster from catching more and more fish. Fishing skill books are worth their weight in gold to get over this first hump. On Interloper with the highest fishing skill (5), you can expect 5-6 fish in 6h of fishing, or 6-8 if you use a special technique.

Edited June 4, 2020 by Gun Tech.

[Dr. S.]

Yes, I dunno. On my current interloper run (started in April) I've crafted about 18 arrows, so I've found plenty of feathers. Certainly not all from pre-existing carcasses.

Like I said, I haven't noticed anything about the specific instances you mentioned. I'll keep an eye out.

[Azdrawee]

2 hours ago, Gun Tech. said:

No. Are you playing on Interloper?

I'm playing custom, so that could be the difference.

[Sherri]

20 hours ago, odizzido said:

Personally I think food should never get ruined in TLD. Even inside it's below zero all the time so bacteria aren't doing their thing. Frozen meat can sit there for years and be fine.

Nah. Food in a freezer which doesn't maintain a consistent "just below freezing" temperature causes gross freezer burn on food.

I don't think food should last forever, part of the fun is replenishing your supply.

Though I would like to see rock cashes act as a more effective 'freezer' for food storage & a dis-incentive to leave food on the ground - ex attracts or gets eaten by predators.

I tend to pocket a few rocks each time I head out & slowly build up the 50 I need by my base. It does take long though, haven't even made my first one yet. Though there's not much incentive yet.

[Gun Tech.]

1 hour ago, Dr. S. said:

Like I said, I haven't noticed anything about the specific instances you mentioned. I'll keep an eye out.

The specific instances come from noting no feathers come from normal play. You have to do this to avoid getting skunked even more on feathers, but it's not like "these are the specific instances when you get few feathers", it's the opposite.

[Tekuromoto]

On 6/2/2020 at 3:43 PM, Sherri said:

OMG please add scroll wheel support to the horizontal menu of cookable items that opens when you click on an empty cooking spot. Scroll wheel should go left-right in that menu. Scrolling past my million teas to get to the raw meat is painful.

 

Great updates!

The menu when you click on a cooking SPOT should look just like it does when you click on a cooking POT. It's so weird that there's two different menus for the same interface. As always, appreciate the love you guys give this game.

[Dr. S.]

12 minutes ago, Gun Tech. said:

The specific instances come from noting no feathers come from normal play. You have to do this to avoid getting skunked even more on feathers, but it's not like "these are the specific instances when you get few feathers", it's the opposite.

I guess I don’t understand. The “specific instances” you mentioned were multiple kills and going inside before harvesting leading to no or reduced feathers. 
 

I certainly don’t experience “no feathers come from normal play” in interloper. Like I said, I‘ve found 60+ feathers in my current interloper run. 

[Admin]

Update:

We have released an update to address the interactivity of our in-game notifications.

[TroyMcClure]

23 hours ago, odizzido said:

Personally I think food should never get ruined in TLD. Even inside it's below zero all the time so bacteria aren't doing their thing. Frozen meat can sit there for years and be fine.

It's not below zero in all the time, is it?  I don't think it is...because food spoils pretty quickly relative.  It's not even below zero outside all the time...  I'm in the U.S. so maybe there is some confusion between Celsius and Fahrenheit...

[Sherri]

2 hours ago, Tekuromoto said:

The menu when you click on a cooking SPOT should look just like it does when you click on a cooking POT. It's so weird that there's two different menus for the same interface. As always, appreciate the love you guys give this game.

This x 1000.

[Gun Tech.]

3 hours ago, Dr. S. said:

I guess I don’t understand. The “specific instances” you mentioned were multiple kills and going inside before harvesting leading to no or reduced feathers. 
 

I certainly don’t experience “no feathers come from normal play” in interloper. Like I said, I‘ve found 60+ feathers in my current interloper run. 

By normal play, it's meant that killing an animal and harvesting it anytime, and getting feathers after harvesting. This is the mechanic that was in the game for years and is now not working as intended.

By the zero feathers bug, it's meant that going indoors between an animal dying and you harvesting it, it will drop zero feathers, as will refraining from going indoors and killing more than one animal, waiting for them to die, and harvest them, in which case you may get feathers from the first animal but zero feathers from the subsequent harvests.

There are more ways to get feathers, and some of the corpses and found carcasses also drop zero feathers.

This is what makes normal play on Interloper frustrating. Previously, you could make more than a handful arrows after your first forge. Feathers were reasonably rare so that you still would get nothing out of a very early forge, but now they are too rare and set you back. Previously, after you got a few arrows to your name, you could then start gathering wolf pelts and get more feathers, but this is now also set back so that it will take weeks to get more arrows unless you figure out the exact specific instances, play unimmersively and use tricks from experience to somewhat work around them to eke a few more feathers out, i.e. you don't play normally.

You can test this for yourself by starting an Interloper run, do a relatively late forge 2-3 weeks in, and count the arrows you can make before you can kill your first wolf. It will not be many arrows. This makes the game less fun because you took risks gathering and crafting the other resources for arrows, and you get 1/3 of the reward.

Because the core simulation is so well-balanced in this game, this artificial throttling stood out immediately. It was noticed clearly and independently by those who play on Interloper regularly and often.

Edited June 4, 2020 by Gun Tech.

[odizzido]

58 minutes ago, TroyMcClure said:

It's not below zero in all the time, is it?  I don't think it is...because food spoils pretty quickly relative.  It's not even below zero outside all the time...  I'm in the U.S. so maybe there is some confusion between Celsius and Fahrenheit...

Yes I use C

[UTC-10]

Update to 63122.  Still version 1.78

What Admin posted above probably accounts for it. 

 

[Chameleon88]

Back to Rock Cache, noone cares that food decays in it? -50C and food decays......
I have an idea - add salt to the game and make it possible to keep forever salted food only inside Rock Caches.

[MrWolf]

14 hours ago, Gun Tech. said:

You can test this for yourself by starting an Interloper run, do a relatively late forge 2-3 weeks in, and count the arrows you can make before you can kill your first wolf. It will not be many arrows. This makes the game less fun because you took risks gathering and crafting the other resources for arrows, and you get 1/3 of the reward.

I don't find that to be the case in my games, at least not early.  In the early game, I find it helps to harvest as many deer carcasses as possible (that always or almost always produces feathers for me).  Otherwise, the number of feathers spawning around corpses and deer carcasses seems to vary from run to run.

My current Interloper run (started on June 1) is finding fewer feathers around corpses and deer carcasses (without harvesting the carcass).  I only harvested one deer carcass before forging and I had around 25 feathers by the time I forged on day 8.  My previous Interloper run (started on May 25) definitely had more feathers, it seemed every carcass or corpse had feathers.  I also harvested 7 deer carcasses before forging on day 14.  In that previous run, I had over 50 feathers by day 14.

 

 

Edited June 5, 2020 by MrWolf

[Luca Loquax]

I *FINALLY* got my "Faithful Cartographer" achievement thanx 2 the hotfix! :)  Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!  :)

[Gun Tech.]

On 6/5/2020 at 11:45 AM, MrWolf said:

My previous Interloper run (started on May 25) definitely had more feathers

Two runs are not enough to tell, and the zero feathers bug has been in the game for months and months. The test I mean is much easier: whereas before, feathers dropped when you found a corpse, harvested a carcass, or harvested a kill, now sometimes the game misses the dropping feathers part and you get zero feathers. It's most clearly displayed if you go indoors after each kill. You will get zero feathers forever. The second most clear way to see that it's unintended is killing multiple animals, from learning that if you go inside you get zero feathers stay outside, and harvest them all before going inside. Then you may get feathers from the first harvest, but not from any of the subsequent harvests. It was reported by me on Jan 31 and has likely been in the game since 1.69 or earlier.

I will let this go now and forward my observations and send a save to Hinterland. That's the best way.

[Polynomial-C]

Still not available on GoG 😞

[odizzido]

Yeah I had a crash last time I was playing and remembered that was in the patch notes so I checked GoG too. Seems to be pretty infrequent, at least for me, so it's not horrid. Still, because of how saves work I feel a sense of having to perform actions to save the game without transitioning so that I don't lose the chunk of time I just did. Passing time for an hour is a bit of a waste just so the game can save.

[kingpott]

On the topic off this update. was this pushed for linux as well?

As an GoG user I am in the wondrous situation that  the linux version is labeled as 1.76, and the mac version as 1.77 while the windows version is 1.78 without a published change log.

I just wonder if I need to remind someone to update or if this is the latest linux version.

[Polynomial-C]

I've filed a support request at GoG for the missing v1.78 Linux release but got a reply that because of Corona it might take up to four weeks until they can take care of my inquiry. Perhaps someone at Hinterland can get in touch with them?

 

[Polynomial-C]

There's now v1.79 available at GoG...