Let's talk about maple syrup

[krystlebear]

19 hours ago, peteloud said:

Alas, your scouring wasn't all that absolute. 

I have found five syrups in Mountain Town and I haven't finished looking around MT yet.  (I am playing on the PV start game which is advanced.)  I haven't found many in the other areas that I have visited, but in those areas I was more concerned about surviving the cold than looking for syrup.  I have survived 189 days and probably found a total of around 10 syrups.

I now wish that I had saved the image when I found the syrup, although I don't like spoiling the challenge for others.

Every load is different.. some people say they find 4 maple syrups in one house sometimes. It's basically luck of the draw.

[JaySovereign]

I found 2 more last night. This is my second save of Winter's Embrace of which I go through and check everything. I am so burned out and I have no idea how far I have left to go...

[piddy3825]

On 7/14/2020 at 2:55 PM, krystlebear said:

Every load is different.. some people say they find 4 maple syrups in one house sometimes. It's basically luck of the draw.

you are correct that every launch is different.  It does appear however that at least one region always gets the 4 bottles spawned.  In one run, I got 5 in PV, (4 in the house one in the barn outbuilding.)  In another run it was 4 in ML.  My cousin stated he found 4 in Broken Railroad.  I'm averaging about 10 bottles per launch but I'm also exploring 75% of the map.  

[traveler]

No Maple syrup on the Summit 🙁 Well at least I have perfect clothing now..

[piddy3825]

1 hour ago, traveler said:

No Maple syrup on the Summit 🙁 Well at least I have perfect clothing now..

No Syrup for you!  Me either!  was the cave covered in snow and inaccessible?

[brandon_moss22]

Hey there. Anybody by chance know a full list of containers/”searchable’s” that contain food items?
 

I assume everything sans med kit /dressers/ workbench / toolbox / trash has a chance for syrup.. Anyone notice a trend of where they find it?

[traveler]

17 hours ago, piddy3825 said:

No Syrup for you!  Me either!  was the cave covered in snow and inaccessible?

Is there a cave on the Summit? I took the way through the cave up to the top (via the Secluded Shelf).

[piddy3825]

2 hours ago, traveler said:

Is there a cave on the Summit? I took the way through the cave up to the top (via the Secluded Shelf).

yeah, generally there is a shallow cave at the summit.  It's usually located just between the tail section and the climbing rope as your facing the tail section.   In survival mode, you can often find a corpse in there with a copy of GUNS GUNS GUNS, maybe a climbing rope and some other goodies. 
It has reportedly been blocked  and inaccessible for some players during this campaign event.  

[GothSkunk]

The other thing you can do, although this is a bit cheesy, is to savescum.

 

Best done when entering an indoor structure and forcing that autosave. You can then consume all the syrup you have in your inventory/search the building for syrup, eat all of it, immediately leave the game WITHOUT SAVING, then load back in to the game. You will spawn in at the point where your last autosave was, which was when you entered the building, so the syrup in the building will not have been consumed. You can then loot it again, and eat it. The game merely keeps track of how many syrups you eat, regardless of the means you use to get them.

[piddy3825]

19 minutes ago, GothSkunk said:

The other thing you can do, although this is a bit cheesy, is to savescum.

ohhh, so that's how it's done?  wow, I guess that is the epitome of meta gaming, right?

[GothSkunk]

Like I said, it's cheesy, but it works.

 

I did it myself out of frustration, because it's my third Winter's Embrace save game and I have hardly found any syrup between Milton, Pleasant Valley, and Coastal Highway. It doesn't spawn out in the open like the chips too. It's most likely to spawn in kitchens, but sometimes it can spawn in locked lockers. That, and I also went to the summit of Timberwolf Mountain in my first save, but there wasn't any chips OR syrup in the plane, so I felt kind of slighted.

[peteloud]

So that badge is a badge awarded to cheaters.    It shouts out, I cheat in TLD.

 

[Senauer]

Well, then. I want to shout out that I cheated.

As @monsieur_cronky very well stated:

“While I think most people value badges to a large extent because they serve as a reminder of a small triumph, some people also see an element of value in them as a collector's item. Not unlike collecting merchandise, it's a visual reinforcement of a connection to something you love. It's not necessarily one or the other, it can be a mixture of both elements.”

I love The Long Dark for what it is, with its goods and bads. For what it has meant to me at many stages of my life. And I don’t feel that I have to prove anything to anyone. I have the Platinum trophy in my PS4 and thousands of hours (literally) put into the game. Does that make me a better player than others? On a side note: I don’t think it does (I just suck at Loper).

I don’t consider myself better or worse for having “cheesed” (and not “cheated”) the badge. If anything, a mere collector. A completionist who perhaps doesn’t have at this moment enough time or energy to invest into the game he so deeply loves.

In the end, i think it boils down to a matter of fulfilment. I feel fulfilled. And I don’t think that I’ve harmed anyone for that.

And to those who judge, please try not to do it in front of a tree. Step aside and picture the whole forest first.

P.S.- Hats off to everyone who plays hard to get the badge, no matter if they get it or not. You have my respect and admiration.

Edited July 24, 2020 by Senauer
Grammar check

[SirSharper]

6 hours ago, peteloud said:

So that badge is a badge awarded to cheaters.    It shouts out, I cheat in TLD.

 

Cheat: 
1.: act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, especially in a game or examination.
2.: avoid (something undesirable) by luck or skill.

Sorry, I can't agree with your statement. If the badge says "Collect Maple Syrup & Ketchup Chips (multiple saves)" .. and you collect them, using 25 saves where you grabbed 1 maple syrup each time, you still followed the rules. 

The badge awarded "grinders". Did you grind for the badge?  

[GothSkunk]

For what it's worth, when I applied the savescum trick, it took me twelve syrups to get the badge.

 

Which meant, over the course of my three saves, I averaged 4.3333 syrups per game.

 

Compared with the frequency of Chip spawns, in my opinion that is nuts.

Edited July 24, 2020 by GothSkunk

[ManicManiac]

7 hours ago, peteloud said:

So that badge is a badge awarded to cheaters.    It shouts out, I cheat in TLD.

I think that's rather presumptuous to try and assert that everyone who earned the badge is a cheater.

Take me for example...  I was very open about how I earned mine, and I don't feel like it was a cheat.

For those who didn't follow along, I kept my first run going throughout... but after realizing the spawn chances were so rare, I did end up playing two more runs concurrent to my original.  I'd spend an hour on each of the three runs per night, and continuously searched from location to location.  This (I think) keeps in line with what Hinterland intended... as well as represented a significant time investment on my part.

The short version: not everyone who earned the badge is a cheater. 

Edited July 24, 2020 by ManicManiac

[peteloud]

"So that badge is a badge awarded to cheaters."

I did not say that all people awarded that badge are cheaters.  A Venn Diagram could show the logic of my statement, but I can't do a Venn Diagam here.

[SirSharper]

2 hours ago, GothSkunk said:

when I applied the savescum trick

Savescumming is an exploit, and therefore cheating. So, maybe @peteloud makes a solid point. 

[Senauer]

4 hours ago, SirSharper said:

Cheat: 
1.: act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, especially in a game or examination.
2.: avoid (something undesirable) by luck or skill.

What is the advantage that one gains when the badge is achieved? None. If it would be a “feat” badge then one could benefit most likely from some kind of boost. And perhaps that could be considered as “cheating”. But even then, against who would one gain such advantage? Against who would be one cheating? Against him or herself? We would be talking about deep psychological stuff here. Against the malevolent wolf AI? Against the blizzard god? That’s right: against no real-life person, really.

This is neither CoD nor a hardcore multiplayer game where cheaters ruin the gaming experience of other users. This is The Long Dark, a single-player-taylor-made-customizable survival experience. With no leaderboards (even though they existed to some extent in the past until they were removed). With no competition. With no on-line interaction with other people (aside from these forums). With no messing with other player’s gaming experiences.

And that’s why this game is so rich. Because each time we fire up our gaming rigs, everyone of us can get to live and contemplate the Quiet Apocalypse as we really see fit at that very moment. 

People may think I am a cheater. Well, I just think I play the game as I feel like at the time. And what is more important, the way the game allows me to.

Because, as someone once said: “the code is law”.

[piddy3825]

Oh, well...

just another week of this and it will all be behind us.  Some of the players will have worked for the badge by thoroughly playing the game exploring all areas and will still come up empty handed ie; no badge acquired.  Others will have played multiple games in pursuit of the goal and will have triumphed from their efforts.   Some will grind it out launching game after game after game looting the same map over and over and over and over again.
...and a few will exploit a meta gaming loop hole and basically cut and paste their way to the achievement. 

to each his own I say.  

https://youtu.be/qbXfEGVpqrM

 

[peteloud]

8 minutes ago, piddy3825 said:

. . . to each his own I say.

 

I actually agree with you.  

It is not the use of mods. or other exploits that irritate me, it is when people who have used devious methods to achieve  badges, feats, skill levels, then make out that they are smart, clever experts, when they are not.

It all stems from a posting I read here about a year ago, by a guy saying how he had a severe struggle to get to 10 days in a straight Interloper run.  I understood his problems and sympathised with him.  My best Interloper game lasted 5 Days.   At around the same time another guy was claiming that he had had 50 Interloper games of over 1,000 days.

One of those guys won my respect, the other didn't.

[SirSharper]

1 hour ago, Senauer said:

What is the advantage that one gains when the badge is achieved? None. If it would be a “feat” badge then one could benefit most likely from some kind of boost. And perhaps that could be considered as “cheating”. But even then, against who would one gain such advantage? Against who would be one cheating? Against him or herself? We would be talking about deep psychological stuff here. Against the malevolent wolf AI? Against the blizzard god? That’s right: against no real-life person, really.

This is neither CoD nor a hardcore multiplayer game where cheaters ruin the gaming experience of other users. This is The Long Dark, a single-player-taylor-made-customizable survival experience. With no leaderboards (even though they existed to some extent in the past until they were removed). With no competition. With no on-line interaction with other people (aside from these forums). With no messing with other player’s gaming experiences.

And that’s why this game is so rich. Because each time we fire up our gaming rigs, everyone of us can get to live and contemplate the Quiet Apocalypse as we really see fit at that very moment. 

People may think I am a cheater. Well, I just think I play the game as I feel like at the time. And what is more important, the way the game allows me to.

Because, as someone once said: “the code is law”.

I enjoy that you grabbed my definition of cheat to make this statement. My statements after that definition are sort of on the same line as yours. Its single player, and there is a goal. How you get to that goal (without breaking the game) is totally up to you. 

 

[ManicManiac]

10 hours ago, peteloud said:

I did not say that all people awarded that badge are cheaters.

Fair enough, perhaps I did infer more than was meant to be implied... however, I don't think you gave much context with that initial statement, so a misinterpretation was also perhaps inevitable. 

[slackhideo]

I hadn't played TLD for a long time, so I thought this event would be a great opportunity to get back to it. And I had a blast surviving the 25 days. I'm not a good player, like [probably] most players here, so it was a challenge for me, even though it worked in my very first run (thanks to the kind random spawn, that dropped me in MT, a map that I know reasonably well). But (yeah, there is always a "but"), when I realised I was not going to get those syrups just by playing normally, I got disheartened. I know some people enjoyed the run for the syrups, while others definitely didn't. I happen to be in the second group. But I didn't come here to complain (plot twist!), I came here to thank the community for sharing tips and information about the quest for the syrups. Without your help, I'm sure I would not get that Canadian Feast badge, so thank you, kind members!

[eric4x4]

This will be the the first event badge I have not been able to collect.

Not a huge issue, just annoying.