The first 30 days of Interloper are the easiest

[darkscaryforest]

I've seen it posted time and time again that the start of an Interloper game is the hardest. Allow me to offer you a counter perspective:

 

New run? It's all fun. As you dart from shelter to shelter in search of loot. It might be rare, but rest assured, it's there.

To Quonset, to the summit, to the gold mine. So much risk, yet so little on the line. 5 hours or 6? A screw up is easy to fix.

Simply start once more. Your route is better than before! You know where all the goodies are and how to get them.

The cold, is it cold? The plane wreck dressed you bold. Matches are plenty, and no coal spawn is empty, and there's many reasons to use them.

Do not fear the forge. There's cattails to gorge. There's herbal tea and coffee to sustain you. Though the wolves may glare, you have a flare! The wind cannot doom you.

Time to craft some gear? Carcasses are near. The rabbit groves are brimming. The saplings there for trimming.

Cooking and archery five. The slog takes a dive, as the hard work and gambling seem behind you.

You're all set. There's no reason to fret. Meat and fish stocks aplenty. The cured products are many. But, the game is just beginning.

Don all the furs that please. No matter, you still freeze! You can't justify a match. Letting clothes tear before a patch. The weather is worse, but who knows how long you'll be playing?

Each day lived is more weight. It'll bury you, it's fate. How tall is the time you lug around? For the wolf to pin to ground.

They've always been there. You know the map and you know where. You have supplies, you've taken care. After all, you've traveled this path many times before.

Did the bear give it a scare? It seemed a little unfair. That wolf wasn't near its lair. You brought the bow to the fight, but when he charged, he inched right.

You were well fed, your condition high. You used the axe. Fatigue was near max. Yet it mattered naught, that wolf fought and fought.

Maybe not a wolf, but a mis-clicked rope. Maybe it was just a foot high slope. Trapping you to your doom. You could not jump out of that tomb.

Maybe you double clicked some raw meat. A surprise aurora lit wires that bought defeat. There's no room for error, in evading The Long Dark's terror.

Mitigate, plan, rules that are strict. Sooner or later they will conflict. At least you learned an important lesson for next run? Don't go to coordinates forty, eighty-six on day two thousand and one?

In truth, every run has its unique grave ready. Which has me wondering, when things are nice and steady. It might not be worth the risk to go to that new place, and have a predator tear off this old man's face.

Wouldn't it be better to just start anew? In fact, that's just what I'll do.

 

[exeexe]

Its hard the first 30 days because you dont have arrow and bow and 1 wolf can easily kill you in the right circumstances and with some missmatched luck

[peteloud]

For many people it is very easy.

Mods are wonderful, for some people.

[straffin]

15 hours ago, peteloud said:

For many people it is very easy.

Um... no guns in Interloper, so that can't be Interloper... right?

[peteloud]

9 hours ago, straffin said:

Um... no guns in Interloper, so that can't be Interloper... right?

If you check the yellow text you'll see it is Interloper.

I was trying to make the point that people who use mods can give themselves any equipment they want and make Interloper very easy.  

Similarly, people who use loot tables can make Interloper much, much easier.

[Stinky socks]

Poetry!! That was great, @darkscaryforest!!

[galahan]

Yeah easy my $xYZ. My 10th trial run at 8th day ended with another wolf butchering me in PV. He attacked me over fire, i am 90% full condition and have crowbar to defend. Imagine a game where you run away from wolves entire time, and eventually matches will run out. It is not fun for me. After trying interloper for a week i m no longer interested in the game anymore. Only if i can change the wolf behaviour.  Even with a bow, any encounter can kill you. 

[straffin]

15 hours ago, peteloud said:

If you check the yellow text you'll see it is Interloper.

But, no guns in Interloper, so it's "Interloper", right? 

All you've said is that people can use extraordinary means to make the game easier, but at that point, they're not playing the "real" game on Interloper any more, no matter what the screen might say, are they?

[Stinky socks]

Well, they are playing the game the way they want to play it. Surely that's not a legitimate reason to be frowned upon.

It isn't any different from creating custom template from interloper by adding gunz

[straffin]

2 hours ago, Stinky socks said:

Surely that's not a legitimate reason to be frowned upon.

Agreed, but surely that's not something to call "Interloper difficulty", is it? Say that you're playing a custom difficulty, or say that you're using mods to make it easier that Interloper is ordinarily, but don't do those things then say (because of your changes to the game) that "Interloper is easy". 

[peteloud]

I am not in the least bothered by people playing TLD with difficulty reduced.  What does irritate me is that many people boast how they play at interloper level but use a variety of ways of making Interloper easy, so that their boasts about their epic achievements are bulls**t.

 

[straffin]

19 hours ago, peteloud said:

I am not in the least bothered by people playing TLD with difficulty reduced.  What does irritate me is that many people boast how they play at interloper level but use a variety of ways of making Interloper easy, so that their boasts about their epic achievements are bulls**t.

 

THIS. This is exactly what I was trying to say, and, now that *you've* posted this, I can hear the sarcasm in your original posts above. I *totally* missed it before. Sorry.

[Schrodingers Box]

When you mod interloper to make it easier it’s not interloper, it’s interliar. 
  You are NOT an interloper player if you make it easier. 
  also the first 30 days are the hardest, not the easiest despite the cleverness of the poem. anyone who has played real interloper is well aware of that. Anyone who has actually played interloper knows that once you get a bow you can easily last indefinitely and there is no challenge once you establish bases on each map- its easiest then by far, especially compared to the start of the game. 
 the first 30 days may be the most fun, but they are absolutely not the easiest. 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Schrodingers Box

[UpUpAway95]

I get so tired fo people arguing about relative difficulties in this game... like Interloper is the bible.  I've heard notable Twitch streamers outright say that interloper is the toughest difficulty in this game.  It is NOT... and they know it.  (So, how about Interloper players stop the boasting over Interloper, instead of dumping on people who admit to playing a custom version of an interloper-type game based on Baseline Resources set at Low).  How do you weight relative difficulty if a custom player adds a rifle (which are still pretty rare to find and can't be repaired until the player gets to Bleak Inlet), but then eliminates healing and birch bark teas... playing more generally to a Deadman level than interloper?  Deadman itself is a Custom setting.  The toughest difficulty settings in this game come from the Custom menu...so cache your egos folks and stop using the Custom menu to badger other players into playing a setting they simply don't want to play... for whatever reason they don't want to play it.  I'm proud to say I now only play Custom games.  It's the best feature of this game.

The first 30 days of any run in this game are the most enjoyable... for two reasons 1) If the character dies, there is less time and effort invested in the run... making it easy to just start again. 2) Those early days are by far the most interesting... making it easy to stay engaged in the game and the time passes quickly.

What I want to know is why, when using interloper settings in the custom menu for weather and freezing rates, etc.... why do I freeze so much more quickly and succumb to hypothermia and frostbite so much more quickly than I regularly see Interloper twitch streamers succumbing to the same termperatures at the start of the game (i.e. before matches and hot drinks)?

Edited April 19, 2021 by UpUpAway95

[Schrodingers Box]

Well for those paying attention, of course interloper isn’t the hardest level. Deadman of course is harder. 
Also some custom settings can be made that are harder than the default interloper settings. 
   The discussion here is about the ridiculously uneducated claim that the first 30 days of interloper are the EASIEST.  It’s absolutely untrue. That’s the discussion. 

[Stinky socks]

It sure seems a lot easier and more enjoyable if you sit back in a chair and sing a tune @darkscaryforest put together!🎶🎵

[Schrodingers Box]

9 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

The first 30 days of any run in this game are the most enjoyable... for two reasons 1) If the character dies, there is less time and effort invested in the run... making it easy to just start again. .

 

For me its the exact opposite.  For me the excitement is when you have everything to lose on a risk. Its not nearly as fun when you have nothing to lose because you arent invested.

   Taking my 1000 day interloper character into Ash Canyon for the first time without researching the area or pulling a map was the most unnerving adventure I can ever recall in gaming.  And the horror when I finally found a cave only to find the caves were not warm (which has since been nerfed) and experiencing a true survival emergency on a character months in development.  What wouldn't be fun would be just creating a new stalker character to explore the region first with no danger of dying and nothing to lose, or if I save-scummed the character.

Edited April 19, 2021 by Schrodingers Box

[darkscaryforest]

Wow I'm surprised anyone liked my bad poetry, thanks for the nice comments.

So for anyone who didn't get what I was going for, it's a commentary on the anxiety of working with characters with high day counts. Obviously it depends a lot on personality here, but many would find trying something risky with a 1000 day character much more mentally taxing versus doing that with a relatively new file. Also, as the game progresses many players, certainly me included, fall victim in agonizing over the conservation of supplies.

I was watching this stream of somebody around day 600 that got jumped by a wolf in ash canyon. He survived that at about 40% condition, but started to bleed so that gave him scent. By the time he applied the bandage, another wolf close by was stalking him and he was forced to shoot his flare gun. Afterwards, all he could do was lament that he used a flare...but it was that or die..so the pressure to stretch supplies as long as possible is just funny and I think that gets worse late game.

It's kind of ironic that while the beginning of a run is mechanically difficult because you are lacking tools or supplies, it can be freeing in a way because you have little to lose in terms of what you've invested.  Really though, the level of fun (and stress I suppose) is completely up to the player, how much time they want to invest, their current skill level, and even the specific character they want to use. I suppose if I had many high day count characters, sure I might yolo one if I had already done everything else I wanted with it.

Edited April 20, 2021 by darkscaryforest
wording

[Stinky socks]

Thank you, this is exactly how I feel. If I were to lose my mouldy Astrid today, I'd be upset, not only because I'm at 400something days, but more so because I've set up some beautiful bases throughout the world. I have decent set of tools in all major regions, food, water and other supplies. Great bear feels like home. 

For example, I have arrived to twm hut, and my fridge is stocked with ruined meat, lots of water and I can basically go to sleep without worrying that I'll need to hunt in the morning! That goes for most everywhere I go, except ash canyon. I haven't set anything up there.

At certain points, I break dwn nd cry, because I want to jump off a cliff and start afresh because I've exhausted everything, but then I calm myself with a depressing thought that it'll be the same thing all over again if I kill myself.

Everything is already learned in all regions and it'll never be the same. It won't be truly fresh start anymore. So I hang on to my beauty. She's a whiny little perfection in my eyes this Astrid.

Thank you! Love, peace and outcome! Hugs, not drugs!

 

Edit: @peteloud, where did you get that beautiful sweater with shapes? I haven't seen one like that yet! Wearing two fisherman sweaters at the moment. Do tell I beg of you!

Edited April 20, 2021 by Stinky socks

[peteloud]

4 hours ago, Stinky socks said:

Edit: @peteloud, where did you get that beautiful sweater with shapes? I haven't seen one like that yet! Wearing two fisherman sweaters at the moment. Do tell I beg of you!

They are very easy to get in Interloper.  Just use a mod to give yourself everything that you want.  Then every few days use the mod to return all your resources to 100% condition.  Combine that mod with, Whiteberry maps and loot tables and Interloper is as easy Pilgrim.

[Stinky socks]

It doesn't naturally spawn somewhere? I only use mod for cabin lighting. Is it possible to just find the sweater somewhere? My game is custom easy-medium. Does it only spawn on interloper? Thank you!.

[Mistral]

7 hours ago, peteloud said:

They are very easy to get in Interloper.  Just use a mod to give yourself everything that you want.  Then every few days use the mod to return all your resources to 100% condition.  Combine that mod with, Whiteberry maps and loot tables and Interloper is as easy Pilgrim.

"Very easy to get in Interloper" and then you go off to list things that don't make the game Interloper at all?? I still don't know if these posts of yours are supposed to be sarcasm or not

[Stinky socks]

I think it was just part of friendly banter:)) 

I had to google cowichan sweater and came across this:

I was in bleak inlet a while back, but I don't remember seeing one there. It's very pretty, so I doubt I would have missed it. On the other hand, it may be somewhere in one of my stashes somewhere. 

The sweater does appear quite heavy. I'm wondering if the added weight adds enough benefit over fisherman sweater I have, heres comparison:

[Dr. S.]

1 hour ago, Mistral said:

"Very easy to get in Interloper" and then you go off to list things that don't make the game Interloper at all?? I still don't know if these posts of yours are supposed to be sarcasm or not

He's a tad obsessed with the idea that people who discuss long interloper runs here are actually manipulating the game behind the scenes by modding it or editing save files, or whatever. (See, for example, this thread.) It doesn't read as sarcasm to me, but YMMV.