I need some help with interloper

[PrincessAutumn]

If this topic has already been shared then I will delete this, I didn't see any similar topics in the search.

I need help on interloper. Last time I played that level, I had died twice, both times in 5 minutes or less from freezing to death. I know we are not part of mother nature's plan but damn, woman! Cut me just a little slack won't ya? 

I'm not a complete noob to the level as I do know that you have to craft your own tools and the rifle is not present but any tips on surviving longer would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much. 

[Serenity]

The first few days are hard. It gets easier once you've survived a few days. But not all attempts will be successful.

Basically you need to realize where you are and know where you need to go. A lot of it depends on where you start. The TWM spawn is very good. You can walk straight to the mountaineer's hut and throw all your wood into the fire and spend the night. You get easy matches, plus a tool (mag lens, hammer or hacksaw). Or you can go right to the open cave for extra matches, warm up in the indoor cave between the engines, pick up some coal. And from there to the hut. From TWM you get to PV which has great loot. The PV start itself isn't bad either for that reason. It's a quick walk to the farmstead more or less straight ahead.

The DP start isn't bad for loot. There are matches in Hibernia. But getting from there to CH can be a bit iffy.

With the FM start the best option is to go to Spence's homestead for matches. You can also spend the night there, but it will also cost a lot of fuel that can be used for forging later. The alternative is to head to the train and use the flare to make a fire. But then there is a good chance that you won't find matches in ML.

The HRV start has the potential for fantastic loot, but that requires a lot of skill and knowledge.

Also try to get a spawn where you start in daylight and clear weather. Too late in the day can be pretty bad.

Other than that you need to spend the early days constantly moving and looting the major locations on a map. Don't stay anywhere longer unless you're pinned down by bad weather.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Serenity

[ManicManiac]

@PrincessAutumn

I'm currently in the midst of a new Interloper run (to see if I was still up to scratch on that difficulty).  I'd be happy to discuss strategy/playstyles with you, if you'd like.  I don't claim to be an advanced player, but I would be happy to share with you the strategies that have worked well for me.

I'd already manged to stay healthy through the first 25 days without weapon or crafted tools (or even a bedroll).
I've put off going to a forge, and so far I seem to be doing well... so I don't plan on going to a forge anytime soon.
I'm working towards surviving and thriving without needing them.

So far, I'd say my initial thoughts would be to stay on the move...  Plan out your routes carefully, and get a feel for how long you can be out before you start freezing to death.  Then when planning to get to your next chosen destination, keep in mind places you can go to seek warmth while on the way.

I did (for a bit) try to start homesteading, but I realized that was going to be a mistake (it would have worked in the long run, but was too slow on progress for my liking).  I think it was far too early to try and get settled someplace.  After I got back to a more nomadic mindset, it paid off pretty quickly.

Stones are a survivors good friend.  They can get you food.  They can distract wolves... and even discourage wolves from stalking you, if you can get good at estimating a throw without "aiming in."  Right now stones are my only defense.

Another thought... always try to be ready to adapt on the fly.  Even in this first month of my run, I've had to think a lot on my feet (so-to-speak).  Weather, predators, the bitter cold... or even what you find or fail to find at a location can quickly require the player to modify their immediate plans.

If you're at all interested, I've been journaling my latest run.

 

Edited March 11, 2021 by ManicManiac

[odizzido]

So I normally don't play interloper but I made a game of it just now to see what I do. I have made it to day six or something so far no problem and these are the things I notice I do:

1) Don't be afraid to skip loot you don't need to keep weight down

2) Magic houses are your friend because they're warm forever. Each time you pass a house if you can sleep(enough food/water) you can rest in a bed until your temperature is high. This also allows you to sprint around outside more to reduce the time spent in the cold.

3) Look after your most immediate needs. If you have plenty of food, don't go out of your way to collect it. If you don't need cloth don't shred anything. If you don't need wood don't pick any up unless it's in your face and it takes no time.

4) Hills are your friend. Until you have a weapon it's best to avoid dogs. Hills can let you see where the doggos are.

5) Don't bother killing/harvesting animals right away unless you have to, all they will do is make you stinky.

6) Don't stay in one place. Collect what you can from the area and keep going to new places until you find smithing equipment(your long term survival gear maker)

7) Unless you're about the get to a central area you will be passing through again don't collect wood until you're encumbered. It just slows you down.

8 ) When you do sleep use herbal tea if you need extra health and sleep in.....five?...six? hour blocks then drink more if needed.

9) Use your health credits on what you need the most. I found I kept my food/water high because I needed to spend my health credits on cold damage. Of course I got lost in a blizzard because I didn't know the map well enough so that's why I was doing that.

10) Don't be afraid to use your valuable stuff right away. I used a stim on day two. Later on when I have better stuff I won't care as much about stims and such.

 

Hopefully that helps. Really it's all about determining your most immediate need or your weakest point and focusing on that.

[twosheds]

You shouldn't start a game on Interloper without knowing the locations. Explore locations on easy difficulty levels, then switch to Interloper

[odium]

interloper you really need vast knowledge of the maps and spawn locations of critical items.  mag lens, matches, hammer, hacksaw.  i like the FM start the best.  i hit all the big loot spots and book it for camp office mystery lake.  fill in the rest of what i need around ML to create bow/arrowheads and at least 2 knives, then run back into FM for a quick forge session.  back to ML again to collect rabbits/deer/bear/wolf pelts to create some clothes. next i move to CH followed by PV to fill in the man made clothing holes. 

 

interloper is all about efficiency too, as odizzido really emphasized.  you will only have time and resources to do a few things that are really important.  food/water deplete too quickly to linger around and shred clothes or collect boatloads of firewood early game.  stay fast and light so you can sprint, get the basics first and the rest will come.  there is plenty of cattails/plants and manmade food to get you through the first couple weeks.  cattails are really the goto, i grab every one i see early loper.  for the first month or two you really need to manage your down time as well. always fill your 'warm up' times with something, process plants, repair clothes, break down torches etc.  you gotta squeeze everything you can out of the calories and water you have! 

 

edit: forgot a critical tip! LET YOUR PLAYER STARVE!  the hunger damage is so minimal, its commonplace to start the day on red and not eat until its time to sleep.  you need 4-5 cattails to get a full 10 hours of sleep, which is the max on loper before water runs out too.  maximize condition gain by sleeping in large chunks at night. 

Edited March 11, 2021 by odium

[Mistral]

1 hour ago, odium said:

there is plenty of cattails/plants and manmade food to get you through the first couple weeks.  cattails are really the goto, i grab every one i see early loper. . 

There are million pre-placed deer carcasses laying around early on, too, it makes sense to carve most of them. Even if you haven't found hacksaw yet the temperatures are so mild on early loper that you can easily wait until you can carve them with hands with stick-fire next to carcass. It will help towards getting very early game deer pants and boots too, as well as continually producing more water as byproduct while you do the carving

Edited March 11, 2021 by Mistral

[Serenity]

6 minutes ago, Mistral said:

 will help towards getting very early game deer pants and boots too

That's really the main reason I do it. Hides take some days to cure so it's good to get started early. The bit of food is just a bonus.

The area around the Hydro Dam (including the Ravine) is fantastic for deer carcasses. There are more than you need there.

[Bean]

Here’s a loot table for IL mode.  It tells you where each critical tool will be in your game instance.  The only trick is you have to figure out which one of four instances you’re in!  I started a new IL game the other day and am in 4, so I knew to check the fishing hut near the fishing camp for a hammer.  Now that I’ve got that, and the hacksaw, I have to decide whether to backtrack to DP for the forge or press on towards Muskeg for a chance at more loot and food along the way.  Usually the best strategy is to keep moving to new places and finding new gear until you get everything you need and can forge some tools.  Those are critical to long term success, and long term success requires crafted clothing, which you’ll need to stay in place for a while to craft.  
Keep in mind that as your days get longer, the world gets drastically colder.  If you’re still at 10°C in clothing at day 40, it’s going to be VERY difficult to continue.  
 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11n0wfRQadaWay4feLbunF9dxIbS2hZ3O_I57x5JfF6s/htmlview

[Serenity]

16 minutes ago, Bean said:

The only trick is you have to figure out which one of four instances you’re in!

That's not needed at all. And it takes some enjoyment out of the game for me. I will never memorize the loot table enough to correlate item spawns and I have no issues with surviving.

It's perfectly fine to just know where something might spawn. Then you can check those locations. Most of them aren't obscure locations, but ones you pass anyways during regular travels. It's also possible to survive for a long time without things like a bedroll or a mag lens. They certainly make things easier, but they aren't absolutely essential.

For example I will visit the barn in PV to see if a hammer or hacksaw is there. But I don't know if it will be. And if not that's fine. There can also be some other items there and I want to stop there anyways to warm up while going to Thomson's Crossing.

 

The poster has some more fundamental problems if she can't reliably make it to the first shelter. Sometimes that happens. For example if you spawn in bad weather or darkness. Or you spawn in HRV. But most of the time it shouldn't be too difficult to make it to the nearest warm bed. Basic looting and tools comes after that. Then forging and then crafting clothing.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Serenity

[odium]

5 hours ago, Mistral said:

There are million pre-placed deer carcasses laying around early on, too, it makes sense to carve most of them. Even if you haven't found hacksaw yet the temperatures are so mild on early loper that you can easily wait until you can carve them with hands with stick-fire next to carcass. It will help towards getting very early game deer pants and boots too, as well as continually producing more water as byproduct while you do the carving

indeed!  i usually prioritize getting the hides early game if i at least have a saw

[odizzido]

You don't need to know spawn locations of items, and I don't think you even need to know the maps really. It helps of course, but from my experience they're not necessary. I don't know the maps very well and I got lost a few times in just my first six days when I tried a loper game last night. I don't know the connections well either so I was just wandering around not sure where I was going.

What I think you do need to know is how the game works. If you don't know that putting on clothes can actually sometimes make you colder that's going to be a problem. Or that health regenerates really quickly and that you can spend that health currency on what you need the most. Or that houses are warm forever so you don't need as much wood as you would think. Or that you can break meat down into tiny parts to get cooking skill up quickly so you can eat dogs because our character somehow cannot cook a piece of meat through and gets parasites.

[Serenity]

19 hours ago, odizzido said:

Or that you can break meat down into tiny parts to get cooking skill up quickly so you can eat dogs 

That's also something you don't need to do. Skills rise fast enough that you don't need to grind any of them. And there is plenty of food in the early game that you don't have to pine for predator meat. You can live for ages of cat tails alone and even Interloper has plenty of man made food. It's just spread around. It helps to cook most of the meat you harvest even if you don't really need it, but that's about it.

[odizzido]

Yeah I noticed that. I always play custom so I am not used to loper but I had quite a lot of food on the short little game I tried. I didn't touch any of the left over carcasses I passed by because I found searching for clothing and a hammer to be a higher priority and food to not be a concern.

I assume that later on when trying to settle down a little being able to eat dogs would be handy though. That's an assumption I guess, I did see an awful lot of animals so dog meat might not be something you would care about.

[Admin]

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[Serenity]

The main appeal of wolf meat later on is that it's sort of just there. You tend to kill a lot of wolves just to have freedom of movement in certain areas. But I've killed a wolf just to eat it.

 

13 hours ago, Misanthrope87 said:

Food is not plentiful (it's one of the key things about interloper.. lack of food and fastest metabolism) and if you don't move efficiently through an area you can starve if you get stuck sleeping during a blizzard.

You only need 750 calories for 10 hours of sleep. Which is not much more than on Stalker. It's only 5 cat tails. Have you counted the number of cat tails on some maps?

Obviously the man made food isn't all in one place like on lower difficulties. But looting all buildings you can still find a good amount. Together with cat tails, carcasses and bunnies it usually shouldn't be a huge struggle in the early game. It takes a while before you really have to transition to hunting.

Edited March 13, 2021 by Serenity

[hozz1235]

On 3/12/2021 at 8:24 PM, Misanthrope87 said:

Please stop being racist.

Really??

[darkscaryforest]

I'm pretty far from being an expert in Interloper, but I've learned enough through experimentation and from others to offer something. Keep in mind, this is just what I found works best for me and that there's plenty of other formulas for success. There's far more qualified folks here to comment. But..for me, having a successful Interloper run is really mastering 3 separate stages that play very differently.

Stage 1 is bootstrapping: finding the essentials you need to survive long term.

Stage 2 is power leveling: crafting the gear you need to survive long term. This includes animal skin clothing, forging arrow heads and improvised tools, and leveling up really important skills like cooking and archery.

Stage 3 is just survival (or replace with whatever long term objective you have): build up extra supplies while minimizing risky situations

 

I'm just going to talk about general advice in stage 1 in this post since I have a lot to say about it. If you want my take on the other stages, just mention it.

 

-Stage 1 bootstrapping-

A lot of folks have already talked about this. The first thing to do is to find matches. Ideally you want to do this within the first day. You'll find that there is usually a guaranteed match spawn in the maps you can spawn in that you can hit straight away. You need this mostly for water and some warmth. Your first fire will be agonizing, as you'll likely have to start it without a torch (my last run I went through 4 FREAKING MATCHES). See if you can get a book first to help your first fire (NOTE: do not recommend burning fishing skill book) and of course end it by pulling out a torch with at least 30%. If you can find a cooking pot, use it to boil 5-6 liters of water which should last you a while in your looting (might not be on your first fire). You can refill this with toilet water found as necessary.

So, the game is moving between popular loot sites to grab essential tools that either expand your ability to survive or allow you to craft other tools to do that.  This includes: bed roll, hammer, hacksaw, and mag lens. As you go from place to place to gather these, you will find enough store packaged food to sustain you if you move swiftly (even if you sit out blizzards). You can also find plenty of cattails to supplement your diet as a backup. A lot of people like to harvest deer corpses or rabbits to get things curing. Personally I avoid this and just stay completely focused on going from location to location to minimize condition loss. The only exception is if I see birch or maple saplings since that can be done really fast (REQUIRES hacksaw). I'll cut those and try to leave it curing somewhere easy to reach for later (writing it down in notes).

Going from place to place, you'll probably lose condition esp if you're not doing well fed. That's expected. Try to keep it under control by losing no more than 27%, because that's the most you can regain by sleeping in a bed without tea. In most situations, you want to sleep in 10 hour sessions keeping in mind you get most of that back in the last 3 hours of that. It's ok to sleep like 1-2 hour to rapidly regain warmth or some fatigue as long as you know you'll be tired enough to rest for that 10 hours wherever you end up. You can run in circles around your bed to take off a bit of fatigue to get that 10 hours.

You really want to minimize time where you do nothing for hours on end like waiting for weather to pass or waiting to get tired so that you can regain condition. Unless it's an emergency like preventing an item from ruining or crafting makeshift clothes to avoid frostbite, save all your crafting, repairing, skill reading, water boiling, tea/coffee making, cooking, thinking for when you're inevitably trapped indoors waiting on blizzards to pass. Feel free to travel in the blizzard if you're confident you can get to your next location, but make sure you're certain you'll make it without frostbite. If your condition is good, the weather is good, and you've got at least 5-6 hours left in the fatigue tank: keep moving, pushing yourself can pay off.

You'll find that not every loot spot is worth going to (for example, the lake cabins in mystery lake usually just have books and papers for tinder and are kinda out of the way). You want to map out a route in your head that minimizes back tracking. For example, spawning in FM- might be worth it to hit trappers before the camp office, unless you plan to go to milton soon.

Don't get too over encumbered. The benefit of sparse loot in interloper is that you travel light and fast. If there's no downside, use the heaviest stuff first (example: need to eat? use can of peaches before you use can of pork and beans. Have fire and you are warm enough? Use fir firewood before coal).

Don't be afraid to use your supplies at this stage. Light that torch, use that sewing kit, use the bandage, drink herbal tea to recover over 27%, coffee to go up the rope. The supplies you use now gets you the high priority stuff that allow you to succeed. You can be more choosey on what situations you use supplies later when you have plenty of food and top tier clothing, when you can just say shucks guess I'll wait another day to do objective X.

IMO it pays off to be an overachiever at this stage by also finding: fire strikers, sewing kits, coffee and tea, 2 pairs of long john underwear, at least 1 wool torque, wool socks (SIDE RANT: sports socks are just a cloth PIT and aren't worth it), earwraps, stims, and even consider going for the technical backpack / crampons via a route involving something like signal hill and farmstead -> plane crash in PV -> timberwolf summit -> ash canyon gold mine. You don't have to do this now (or even ever) to be successful, but it highlights an important point I live by in Interloper:

Do the riskiest crap FIRST.

If you die sooner than later trying to loot high priority places, starting over won't be that painful. Also, most routes have that store bought food for you the FIRST time you go through them. You'll need to hunt or bring your own when you circle back. All that being said, you do have to find things in a certain order to be able to succeed (like finding a bed roll before summiting).

Another important point is that clothing and food start at low(er) percentages and decay as time goes on, so that summit trip at day 100 won't give you all the cool stuff you could get at like day 6. My first long term interloper save got the bare minimum in stage 1 having only covered ML and CH. He's got everything he needs to survive past day 500, but could be doing it 4-5 degrees warmer had he been an overachiever.

When you've gathered some or all of what was mentioned above, you're ready to move to stage 2.

Well I could ramble on more or add more naunce to what I covered but this is already too long. Good luck!

 

Edited March 15, 2021 by darkscaryforest

[stratvox]

Only thing I'd say is go for the gold mine and then the summit; the crampons make those rope climbs WAAAAYYYYYY easier.

On 3/15/2021 at 4:00 PM, darkscaryforest said:

and even consider going for the technical backpack / crampons via a route involving something like signal hill and farmstead -> plane crash in PV -> timberwolf summit -> ash canyon gold mine.

 

[darkscaryforest]

1 hour ago, stratvox said:

Only thing I'd say is go for the gold mine and then the summit; the crampons make those rope climbs WAAAAYYYYYY easier.

Could you talk more about this? The only reason I do TWM first is because the seemingly guaranteed stim on the summit gets me past the third rope to the mine (though it breaks my heart to use it). Do you usually go to the gold mine through the scary wolves and waterfall near cave way up to miner's folly?

Edited March 17, 2021 by darkscaryforest

[stratvox]

Yes, that's the way I've always done it because it's a lot easier wrt rope climbs. You've still got to be slimmed down to below encumbrance carry weight, but you don't exhaust yourself the way you do going up the back way. The back way looks like suicide to me if you don't have at least two stims, maybe three, whereas you can do it with none going the other way by picking your route to maximize your shelter opportunities. It's a lot better now that caves are caves again in AC; it makes going that way able to be a lot faster because you don't have to go aside to Miner's Folly to be able to rest in safety; a fire in a cave will keep you alive too. Of course if you don't have the bedroll you'll be going to Miner's Folly to rest anyway, and then doing a one shot across all those bridges to get to the gold mine, but <shrug> the views are what makes that trip fun anyway  . It takes a day longer but I think it's less likely to kill you that way.

[PrincessAutumn]

Thank you all so much for your very helpful advice and tips. Finally made it one day, got the achievement and currently in Pleasant Valley community hall where I found a lucky can opener and a couple of cans of food. I had found some cattails along the way there. Thanks again! 

[ManicManiac]

@PrincessAutumn

Well done!
I'm happy it was helpful for you.
Keep surviving.

Edited March 22, 2021 by ManicManiac