Interloper Run: Conquering Mystery Lake Addiction

[darkscaryforest]

I've been obsessed with vanilla interloper and trying to get better. I had a successful 105 day run where I looted a few regions, got frostbite, forged at spence's, crafted all the animal clothes not involving bears or moose. I did kill a couple bears, but never made anything with them. Almost all that time was spent in northern mystery lake at the dam and ravine. I tried to venture into PV, but found it hard to stay there for an extended time. I got enough food to last 50 days or so, but really wanted to start over to utilize a feat, get clothing for a couple empty spots, and have no frostbite.

So I started a new character and had a much bolder route where I hit the PV plane crash, summit, and ash canyon gold mine early. But then I kind of ended up doing somewhat the same thing. I forged at spence's, and geared up this time at trapper's cabin. This time I have every clothing spot filled and just got my first wolf skin coat. I killed the 2 mystery lake bears though I can't decide whether to make a coat or bedroll (which would you say is more valuable?). I just got cooking 5 and again have plenty of food, but I feel like I've just stagnated, not really learning much, and am kind of annoyed at myself for taking no risks (other than a failed moose hunt that gave me a couple broken ribs).

I've really wanted to move out to another region. ANYWHERE that isn't mystery lake. I've read about interloper players that live in all the regions. That's something I want to build to, but where to start and what is the right level of risk to take?  I think I need more bearskins so I guess somewhere with bears that isn't too crazy. Maybe coastal highway. Its supposed to be another easy region, but I've never felt comfortable there because of all the wolves. Any ideas are welcome! I'll post again when I can get myself to move out.

 

Edited April 7, 2021 by darkscaryforest
rewording

[Dr. S.]

The bearskin coat is much more useful than the bedroll, in my opinion, so I would craft that.

My suggestion would be to go to Milton and spend 30 days there. I like to use the Paradise Meadows farmhouse as a base. The nice thing about Milton is that it has a good mix of terrain, with the park/gas station being different than the town which is totally different than the basin. From the basin you can venture down to Marsh Ridge and from there to the rest of FM, which is nice as well.

After Milton, head on over to HRV and spend another 30 days there. Just leave some crafting supplies in the trailer in Milton by the entrance to HRV for things that you might need to replenish that require a bench, like arrows.

[odium]

Coastal Highway all day!  Best mix of every resource in the game.  The only thing CH lacks is warm non-loading screen caves for CF.  But as long as you get on a nice fishing regiment, you will never see CF.  Lots of houses to loot, beachcombing, easy bears, major coal in transition cave, easy navigation, access to indoor forging in DP.  Thats my loper addiction, I stock CH with enough tools/supplies/food to last 1000+ days.  its also fairly central for 'vacation' travelling 

[Mistral]

Bearskin bedroll is useless imo, it detoriates quickly yet doesn't really give that much of extra bonus for those outdoor sleeps... you usually want a fire anyway

Now, this is a bit off the actual topic, but... the biggest fault of Interloper, IMO, is that it is possible to actually achieve this in the first place, you know being able to survive on a single region for hundreds if not thousands of days, with just ocassional visit to other regions. Sure, you may want to get the Crampons and tech packback and 1000  samplings from Ash Canyon or whatever, but you don't actually need to. Even the "mandatory" excursions to forges etc are within quarter day reach from the central regions where it is the easiest to settle into. Simply put, there is too much stuff, stuff, stuff on Mystery Lake and CH and immediate surrounding areas alone to satisfy the needs of long term survival. Particularly since the indoor temps never change and even the outdoor temps max out at day 50, when you should have all the clothes you want anyway. You never run out of fire starting ability thanks not only to hundreds of matches but more importantly the infinity of mag lens, and food also recycles thanks to generous wildlife respawning even on Loper. So then it becomes a challenge of passing time and doing samey chores. So the fault of the mode is that the difficulty is limited to the beginning of the game, and then it ultimately disappears almost altogether if you have done everything right within the first 50-100 days or do.

Now on Deadman there is a bit more incentive to roam everywhere out of necessity, particularly if also you limit the harvestable plants to low and crank up some other things, but even there I would say that only going to 50% of the regions is really necessary-necessary before it becomes kind of the same deal as with Interloper. It will still take a bit more care to build up your hundreds of days of surviving but not to the stage where you would be fighting for your life every day. Well, except perhaps if you decide to live the rest of your life at HRV or something.

Of course with customization and even limiting your play area to say Bleak Inlet and nowhere else you can achieve all sorts of more exciting scenarios for long term survival, but we were talking about the official modes and general difficulty curve here.

Edited April 8, 2021 by Mistral

[darkscaryforest]

Thanks for the answers. Haven't gotten a chance to play yet, but definitely think my next two places to visit will be milton and CH. I need to forge a hatchet for HRV since I only did a knife.

19 hours ago, Dr. S. said:

The bearskin coat is much more useful than the bedroll, in my opinion......

....HRV and spend another 30 days there

2 hours ago, Mistral said:

Bearskin bedroll is useless imo, it detoriates quickly yet doesn't really give that much of extra bonus for those outdoor sleeps

So the reason I asked about the bearskin bedroll is that I would eventually like to live in remote regions like HRV, timberwolf, etc for extended periods. To make that work sustainably long term, I'd need to sleep without a fire or find an online subscription to have a match mailed to me daily. I assumed there would be times where the temperature in these harsh regions could exceed a reasonable warmth bonus at the back of a cave. The added bearskin bonus would shield me from that, but perhaps I'm thinking too conservatively. Another concern are auroras and the bedroll warding off the extended aggression range of wolves while sleeping.

As for the ability to live sustainably in Interloper vs deadman without travel, I'm personally really happy with how it plays now. I still struggle to thrive on interloper, but I suspect it's mostly because I'm conservative with resources and still learning how to do things better. I really like that I don't HAVE to travel everywhere to survive, but it's something I can go do when I'm ready. The various regions give like an extra granularity of difficulty between the 4 experiences. Like when I felt super comfortable in places like ML, DP, and CH in stalker I could get an extra challenge going to HRV and AC on that save.

[Serenity]

1 hour ago, darkscaryforest said:

So the reason I asked about the bearskin bedroll is that I would eventually like to live in remote regions like HRV, timberwolf, etc for extended periods. To make that work sustainably long term, I'd need to sleep without a fire or find an online subscription to have a match mailed to me daily.

You don't need a bearskin bedroll for that. Just good clothing kept near top condition is fine. If you want to play it save sleep in 2 or 3 hour increments and only make a fire when it's actually cold. That can only happen during a blizzard if you let your clothes deteriorate too much.

Where the bearskin bedroll helps is sleeping in shallow caves and other half-outdoors locations. But even in AC or HRV that's optional. HRV has plenty of warm caves, including always warm indoor caves. And AC is actually very comfortable to live in once you figured it out. Maybe bring some scrap metal, but otherwise it has everything you need for staying there over a hundred days.

[Dr. S.]

1 hour ago, darkscaryforest said:

So the reason I asked about the bearskin bedroll is that I would eventually like to live in remote regions like HRV, timberwolf, etc for extended periods. To make that work sustainably long term, I'd need to sleep without a fire or find an online subscription to have a match mailed to me daily. I assumed there would be times where the temperature in these harsh regions could exceed a reasonable warmth bonus at the back of a cave. The added bearskin bonus would shield me from that, but perhaps I'm thinking too conservatively. Another concern are auroras and the bedroll warding off the extended aggression range of wolves while sleeping.

In my experience, once you have a clothing bonus of +22ºC or so, a regular bedroll is sufficient to sleep through the night in the back of any cave under any conditions in interloper.

[Mistral]

If there was a map without any indoor and semi-indoor locations + also lack of warm outdoor caves (as was the case in (most of) AC outdoor caves before it was patched post-Christmas)), then the bearskin bedroll could come to use. In that case, even when sleeping with fire and micro 1-2 hour sleep cycles and 100% clothing, there would always be a danger of fire going out or blizzard rolling or the colder morning temps in general. Then the bearskin would compensate a bit for the rate temp is going down. But even so, not by a big margin... and of course as said the thing detoriates very quickly, sitting there in the ground.

The only upside of repairing bedroll with bear instead of cloth is that bears are infinite, while cloth is not (well, ignoring beach combing), but really who is ever going to run out of cloth. Mountain Town alone has as much as you probably need for the entire game. Maybe if one only lived in Bleak Inlet or wherever it would be more economically viable but even that sounds like a fantasy strech in a long run

Edited April 8, 2021 by Mistral

[darkscaryforest]

Wow yeah, you guys are right about the warmth bonus at the back of the cave. I guess I never paid attention.  So I left Trapper's Homestead for the camp office in mystery lake. I murdered 4 wolves and 1 deer to get a bunch of food in the area. Then, I took turns going on a crafting marathon for the bearskin coat and repairing stuff in the cave at Lake Overlook.  After I completed my bearskin coat and repaired the essentials, I had a warmth bonus of 27 Celsius (highest I've gotten on interloper)!  After stopping at trapper's the next day to grab a couple more arrows I noticed the fog was lifting and something magical happened. My cold bar was full and was NOT going down.

I couldn't pass this up, so I lugged myself out into Forlorn Muskeg heading towards Marsh Ridge. I had to sneak past the wolves I knew would be prowling midway there, edging the northern part of the map. The wolf I didn't know about a bit down from the cave at hat creek gave me a freaking heart attack, but I got in the cave without incident on day 72ish. Took no cold damage the entire time, kind of don't believe it

I brought 4 snares and 10 arrows. I'm going to head into marsh ridge and make a camp, stockpiling wood and food.  Then I'll head upward into the milton basin...which I actually haven't explored and not certain how it connects to the town. My guess is its the same little area that connects to the valley between the park office rope to the cave to ML.

Edited April 9, 2021 by darkscaryforest