Favourite difficulty?

[Blizzard Walker]

I first played on Pilgrim for perhaps 200  game days to learn the basic mechanics of the game.  On occasion I will revert to my Pilgrim character to facilitate exploring unknown regions or test dangerous locations - my first trip across the Ravine's single rail bridge for example.

My Voyageur run is approaching 1,400 days. My goal is 3,000 days or more on Voyageur.  A secondary goal is to thoroughly learn the maps for all regions.  Survival is rarely a concern after assembling high end clothes along with abundant tools, ammunition, arrows and food. Voyageur at times affords an experienced player an almost absurd margin for error - I have over 1,100 matches stashed at various bases.

Presently I am working on building well stocked bases including spare sets of clothes in each region.  In that endeavor I find that Cooking Skill 5 is Hinterland's greatest gift to the casual survivor. My meat stockpile at Trapper's is over 1000 days old.  

At some point I will provide my Voyageur character a comfortable retirement location, most likely at TWM's Crystal Lake, and the repeat the whole process on Stalker.  

Its unlikely I will ever play on Interloper as I like the rifle and revolver too much.  

[piddy3825]

56 minutes ago, Blizzard Walker said:

My Voyageur run is approaching 1,400 days. My goal is 3,000 days or more on Voyageur. 

1400 days!  That is an impressive amount of time in one save game!
Big question, what do you do to keep yourself occupied?  I would think up to this point you must have explored most of the island, of course now you get to check out a new region so the game is automatically fresh. 
That being said how do you pass time when you have a meat supply 4X older than most players total days in game?

[peteloud]

I regarded Stalker as my favourite level of difficulty but for the  latest survival release I just continued with an old Voyager game and found Voyager a much more relaxing game than Stalker.

If I had started a new game in Blackrock in Stalker  I suspect that I would not have found the experience so enjoyable.

 

 

 

[APixelatedLemon]

Custom interloper, where the only difference is I turn off survivor monologue.

[piddy3825]

1 hour ago, APixelatedLemon said:

Custom interloper, where the only difference is I turn off survivor monologue.

Yeah, I wish I could turn off survivor monologue in the regular game.  I don't know what's going on but I'm playing Stalker and currently find myself in Blackrock, only being slightly overencumbered and all I hear is the constant nagging and complaining about how heavy the pack is.  I mean practically non-stop.  I must heard Astrid say the pack was to heavy and she can't possible go on like this 15 times in the space of 20 minutes!

...I finally yelled STFU at my computer and scared the hell outta my dogs...

[APixelatedLemon]

36 minutes ago, piddy3825 said:

Yeah, I wish I could turn off survivor monologue in the regular game.

I mean you kinda can if you go into audio setting and turn voice all the way down, and make sure subtitles are off. If you have decent set of headphone you can still hear the echo of Will/Astrid's voice however.

Also be sure to turn audio back up whenever you decide to go into Story mode.

[manolitode]

6 hours ago, APixelatedLemon said:

Custom interloper, where the only difference is I turn off survivor monologue.

Nice one 😉 suppose I'm habituated with Will's comments and hardly notice them. Except "I've never been so hungry in my life" and I'm thinking yeah 15 minutes ago you were.

[Catlover]

16 hours ago, manolitode said:

Nice one 😉 suppose I'm habituated with Will's comments and hardly notice them. Except "I've never been so hungry in my life" and I'm thinking yeah 15 minutes ago you were.

Exactly! That drives me up the wall sometimes. Will faces bear maulings, moose stompings, and actual starvation without more than a passing comment, but when his food meter is only a quarter full, that's when he decides to start going on about it. You'd think that a rugged canadian survivalist would be a bit less whiny sometimes

Edited December 12, 2021 by Catlover

[Lord of the Long Dark]

Surviving thousands of days is not a testament to accomplishment, it’s a testament to endurance especially on easy levels. 
  Even in interloper, once you reach 100 days you can live indefinitely because food and fuel is stocked everywhere.  It’s not a matter of skill living a long time -  just tolerance. 

[Kranium]

Probably custom, although I've played longest on Interloper. I just keep going back to my longest run. I mostly play to pass time, and binge whenever a new area is introduced.

I'm a bit of a survivalist & live on an acreage in rural BC IRL, and so I want the most realism possible in a survival game. Because of that, I have quite a few nags about this game, however, it's the best survival game I've ever played so I can't complain much. I do wish I could change more settings in this one, to that effect.

[Catlover]

On 12/13/2021 at 7:50 AM, Kranium said:

I'm a bit of a survivalist & live on an acreage in rural BC IRL, and so I want the most realism possible in a survival game. Because of that, I have quite a few nags about this game

I'm curious, what are your issues, if you'd call it that, with the game? I find it really interesting how you live somewhere similar to great bear and wondered what, in your opinion, would make the game the most realistic. I don't live anywhere like that, and so was just curious for your opinion.

[Sir Major M.oos.E Sr.]

Played a whole lot of interloper/deadman only but i did and saw almost everything so now im just enjoying the insane amount of loot and easy living on voyageur ☠️🥫

[Kranium]

9 hours ago, Catlover said:

I'm curious, what are your issues, if you'd call it that, with the game? I find it really interesting how you live somewhere similar to great bear and wondered what, in your opinion, would make the game the most realistic. I don't live anywhere like that, and so was just curious for your opinion.

Mostly it boils down to 2 things: total lack of certain extremely common items we use out here, and how quickly items break. A can of beans lasts years, an axe lasts a lifetime (handle excluded) as can a whetstone (and you can sharpen an edge with a simple flat rock, I've done it), and some of the most common things found in rural BC are snowshoes, skis, sleds, candles, and propane. For examples.

Oh, and not being able to step onto anything higher than 6cm, and too many sprains (I've never had a sprain, and I even do scrambling on the regular). I totally understand it's about game balance, but those things do still drive me nuts.

[piddy3825]

36 minutes ago, Kranium said:

...an axe lasts a lifetime (handle excluded) as can a whetstone (and you can sharpen an edge with a simple flat rock, I've done it)

yeah from a practical standpoint I agree 100%.  I don't know how long you've been playing, but the axe used to be repairable by crafting a new handle using a piece of fir wood, of course that was long before the advent of the whetstone, which in my opinion should hardly ever go bad.  IRL, I've had my whetstone for almost 3 decades now which I got from my uncle who owned it for almost 3 decades before that.  the only thing that has degraded on that whetstone is the plastic case it originally came in and the little foam pad.  I'd like to see the whetstone rebalanced to only degrade by 1% each usage instead of 5% or at least given the option to use one of the ample stones in the game to sharpen my blade and axe as needed.

[Shadox]

For me its Stalker. I have also a Interloper around Day 80,  and while i really enjoy the extreme Cold, i dislike that i have to eat like 5kg Meat each Day just to sustain myself.  I think after i completed the 500 Day achievement on my Stalker ill try a Customgame with Loot, Wildlife and Needs set to Stalker hut Weather set to Interloper. When i went back to Stalker and was suddenly able to chop some wood without freezing, i realized that i missed worrying about the Cold. Id still like to find some Snow Pants, Expedition Parkas, Climbing Socks.. yeah im a Lootwhore

certainly sure that Custom games with interloper weather and stalker everything else will be my favourite TLD experience so far

[peteloud]

Normally I play straight Stalker games but about 15 months ago someone in the forum suggested trying a HRV start in Voyager, so I tried that.  The start was very severe, but after a while I enjoyed playing Voyager, without the hassle of the Stalker wolf packs.

My current game is straight Stalker, with a Blackrock start. 

Voyager gives less challenge but is more enjoyable.

[UpUpAway95]

Custom... and variety.  I like to keep my runs short (manually deleting most of my save files after 30 - 100 days in-game days).  I also using start and stay within a single region.  I'm just not into traversing large areas of the map to get to this or that piece of specific gear.  Whatever I find in the zone I'm in is what I have to work with for that run.  Baseline Resources range from Low to Very High.  Animals range from none (deadworld) to as high as they'll go.  Animal aggression ranges from passive to as agressive as they can get.  I do usually set my starting gear such to give me a bedroll and matches.

'

Edited February 1, 2022 by UpUpAway95

[Bearimpaler101]

On 11/4/2021 at 4:10 AM, odizzido said:

Custom currently. I reduce food/water requirements to the minimum, reduce animals to minimum, reduce health regen to minimum(while still having it exist), and typically reduce loot to minimum. I disable things I find annoying and uninteresting like sprains and cabin fever. That being said I cannot reduce animal spawn rate to as low as I would like so I have not been playing the game as it offers no challenge at settings I find enjoyable.

The setting I will enjoy the most is story mode but I won't be playing that until it's all finished and patched up so I can get the best experience possible. I want to play through the game at my own pace and enjoy it at its best. I am perfectly happy to wait for at long as that takes.

 

On 11/4/2021 at 4:23 PM, hozz1235 said:

Custom all the way.

 

On 11/4/2021 at 9:16 PM, Sito said:

Custom Stalker with Agro off, lots of loot but really cold, max item decay. I play long game. 500+ or even 1000+ and I want the weather to fight me all the way.

 

On 11/5/2021 at 12:45 AM, gamesitwatch said:

Deadman/NOGOA - make it as hard as possible (and I'd love more customizable settings to make it even harder, like turning cat tails off, for example). Surviving has to be challenging for me in a survival game, and at this point, I just know the game mechanics and the maps far too well for it to be challenging on any of the standard difficulties.

I do occasionally go back to my longish interloper run for a vacation.

 

On 11/5/2021 at 1:06 AM, Lord of the Long Dark said:

Deadman.  If you aren’t playing at least at interloper level you are camping, not surviving. 

If you like custom but I think that it's annoying cuz it needs doesn't work towards your feats

[UpUpAway95]

8 hours ago, Bearimpaler101 said:

 

 

 

 

If you like custom but I think that it's annoying cuz it needs doesn't work towards your feats

The thing is, once a person has acquired all the feats, it doesn't matter that their custom runs don't count towards it.  Still, some of us have been asking HL to change this and allow custom runs to count towards feats for years now.

[Bearimpaler101]

Yeah cuz I like stuff like have bears and moose very high for hunting saves and like have stalker without guns or even something small like 4 hour days instead of 2

[UpUpAway95]

5 minutes ago, Bearimpaler101 said:

Yeah cuz I like stuff like have bears and moose very high for hunting saves and like have stalker without guns or even something small like 4 hour days instead of 2

Exactly.  Even just turning off the survivor monologue can only be done in the custom menu... and doing that actually increases the difficulty over the standard settings since you don't get the verbal cues that your character is hungry or thirsty or freezing.

[Bearimpaler101]

I only have free runner  gear btw

[Mistral]

On 2/1/2022 at 12:31 PM, Shadox said:

For me its Stalker. I have also a Interloper around Day 80,  and while i really enjoy the extreme Cold, i dislike that i have to eat like 5kg Meat each Day just to sustain myself.

But on Interloper you only have to eat the bare minimum if you use the old starvation technique?

[ManicManiac]

 

On 1/29/2021 at 12:19 PM, ManicManiac said:

I think Stalker is probably my favorite.  It is a little bit more challenging while still having access to all the game's gear and features - and so I suppose I'd consider it to be the "fullest and most complete" of the Survival Mode standard difficulties.

 

[hozz1235]

On 2/18/2022 at 7:31 AM, Bearimpaler101 said:

If you like custom but I think that it's annoying cuz it needs doesn't work towards your feats

Once you have all your feats, what would you choose?