How to navigate- ım lost

[Glasera]

I just started to "Hopeless Rescue" and first mission is going to timberwolf mountain, but how will I find the way for that map?

[jeridan]

To be honest I would not recommend trying the challenges until you have played survival long enough to explore and learn the maps.  That said, the wiki has maps.

[Glasera]

okay thank you, I'll try challanges after I have more game and map knowladge

 

[starlin]

You'll have to start learning to triangulate land marks if you're using charcoal maps to keep track of yourself.  You can also kind of sort of cheese surveying since using charcoal also zooms in to your current location on the map.   I had to do this once after treking in circles in pleasant valley creek during a blizzard, and not being able to figure out where I was once it finally passed.  Embarrassingly, I was hunkered down right above a cave, and 15 seconds from a cache of firewood I put up in some nearby destroyed cabins.   Which sucked because I wasted 3 matches trying to stretch out my stick supply to avoid dying from hypothermia.....  it was a long ass storm. 

[Gracia_WolfSlayer]

I agree about the Challenges needing a better understanding of where everything is. But there are a few tricks to help you navigate in game while you're learning the regions.

Surveying with the maps can really help you visualize the areas. And once your map is filled out, if you're still lost you can use spray paint! Several of the symbols will appear on your charcoal map after you apply them.

Remember the sun rises in the East and Sets in the West

[ajb1978]

4 hours ago, Gracia_WolfSlayer said:

Remember the sun rises in the East and Sets in the West

Sometimes.  In Mystery Lake the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

[Gracia_WolfSlayer]

1 hour ago, ajb1978 said:

Sometimes.  In Mystery Lake the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

....really?! (sits down to think about the decisions she made in life to end up here)

[AdamvR]

11 hours ago, ajb1978 said:

Sometimes.  In Mystery Lake the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

wow... never actually realized that.
It might be why in my mind Mystery Lake is somehow always upside down: i just kept having this uneasy feeling anytime I was looking at the whole map of Mystery Lake being somehow completely off. In addition to the charcoal version, which has East on top, instead of North. Maybe that is why it is called "Mystery"...

[Mroz4k]

ajb1978 is correct. It is most likely due to the fact tha Mystery lake was the first ever region made for the game. It existed even way back when the game was entirely different graphically wise and mechanic wise. 

Whether or not challenges are a good way to learn the game - I think it depends on a challenge. I would wager some challenges actually exists to help players get familirized with the game a bit. Nomad is a perfect place to start - the challenge is pretty tame, but its closer to Voyageur then Pilgrim, so it teaches a person to be mindful of wolves and predators as they are hostile. It helps to get familirized with the various maps a bit and learn the basics. Hopeless rescue is probably more difficult one, but it will challenge the person to learn the values of conserving one´s energy, maintaining their inventory and only taking the bare essentials. It might be difficult to start there, but it is not impossible to complete even for a newer player. But, I would reccomend starting with a bit of survival mode, or with Nomad.

[ManicManiac]

14 hours ago, Gracia_WolfSlayer said:

....really?!

  Yes indeed, the east-west "day arch" isn't consistent across all regions relative to the world map:

On 11/4/2019 at 4:28 AM, ManicManiac said:

I'm specifically talking about if you were to make a simple "day arch" (a line representing the path the sun takes a cross the sky at any given latitude) and draw it across the world map... that is roughly how the sun should move across the sky in each respective region; from that base reference point.

I wasn't talking about the orientations of our charcoal maps with respect to the "world map" because that is not really relevant (as maps can be drawn from any number of different perspectives - that's why most maps have a Compass Rose on them)...  I was referring to the astronomical orientation.

It doesn't really impact gameplay or the experience though...  It's just something that stood out to a person who has done a lot of Land Nav.    And as @ajb1978 mentioned, it was indeed a bit disorienting/jarring when I played way back in the earlier days (before I got familiar with the landscape itself).  However, I quickly acknowledged it and accepted that (to date) the sun is only really locally significant to each region individually...  Once one accepts that, then we can still easily use it to assist navigation within each region just fine. 

Edited February 26, 2021 by ManicManiac

[AdamvR]

Thanks @ManicManiac for pointing out this having been discussed before!

While I agree that one can play around it, once acknowledging it, and in the end our mindmaps of the regions can take over the role of the charcoal ones, I'll attempt to say it makes no sense whatsoever. and despite the historical reasons for it (probably ML having being developed even before the full GB map was envisioned...?) it is something that has a good reason to be overhauled in the future: rotating all the charcoal maps to match the overall direction, making sure the sun always goes from east to west, and the dropped sticks to point to the North in all regions). I see no reason to keep such a thing inconsistent and potentially confusing. (and programming-wise I would not expect it to be much more than a single transformation-vector for each map between the charcoal representation and the real world coordinates or a one-time shift of all coordinates on certain maps using the same vector - whichever is easier) I have a very strong itch to add it to the wish-list... 😉

The fact that it was discussed before, makes it all the more surprising...

Edited February 26, 2021 by AdamvR

[Stoutlander]

I'm willing to bet that everyone drops "something" that always points to a certain direction when dropped, but doesn't want to talk about it so it doesn't get nerfed. So I'm thinking that if they have a map that is totally reversed with regard to the sun setting and rising, they hopefully won't mess with the "something" that is dropped.

[ajb1978]

16 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

Nomad is a perfect place to start - the challenge is pretty tame, but its closer to Voyageur then Pilgrim, so it teaches a person to be mindful of wolves and predators as they are hostile.

When you're ready to play "for real" I make the same recommendation. Although I recommend Pilgrim Survivor mode to totally new players, just so they can get used to managing their subconditions, navigate the UI, craft and repair, etc. Then when they are no longer fighting with the controls, start a Nomad game. It has that Voyageur baseline, but some solid objectives to achieve that encourage you to press onward as opposed to getting comfy and settling in.