What were your first runs like?

[Catlover]

This probably isn't the first topic on this subject but I was wondering, what were everyone's first runs like, when you barely knew what you were doing, or where you were going? What was the stupidest thing that you did? I'm curious so please let me know if you have any interesting stories!

[Leeanda]

Short!lol😁

[Catlover]

1 minute ago, Leeanda said:

Short!lol😁

Haha, that's definitely one way of describing them! I remember when 5 days, for me, was a massive achievement

[sierra 117]

Can't remember exactly what happened on first run but I do remember that my first  spawn was near the dead fall area in ML.

One silly thing I did do when I was a new player was , when trying to figure out how the snares worked  I was putting rosehip and reishi mushrooms on the ground around them as a kind of bait.

Then I realised you just need to wait 24hrs

[ChillPlayer]

Here's a video of how one of my more succesful Stalker runs back in 2015 ended. I had the game for about a month then and wasn't completely new to TLD anymore but still had alot to learn and one stupid mistake after the other led to my ultimate demise.

 

[Leeanda]

2 hours ago, Catlover said:

Haha, that's definitely one way of describing them! I remember when 5 days, for me, was a massive achievement

If I remember correctly my first death was intentional!  Story mode trying to avoid the first wolf! I didn't! Lol😁 

So 5 days is ages!

[darkscaryforest]

I had a hell of a time figuring out how to make water. I didn't want to look anything up until I had put some decent time in the game. I kept thinking I needed to collect the snow outside in a can. After dying of thirst about twice, I realized you can click the arrow next to the 0.0 L up when a can is on a fireplace.

Also, I stored a crapload of fish inside had no clue about slower decaying outside. Just figured my food would get stolen.

[Pınar51-06]

I start this game by playing wintermute (before the episode 3 release) ı just finished episode 1-2, ı wanted to play survival mode in voyageur difficulty and ı thought when ı killed the old bear in episode 2, ı thought there was no bear anymore. I avoid the wolves, ı was just hanging around the red barn in Pleasant Valley and ı saw the bear was running to me. I was like 😱bear mauled me badly and ı immediately return to pilgrim.

[Leeanda]

5 hours ago, ChillPlayer said:

Here's a video of how one of my more succesful Stalker runs back in 2015 ended. I had the game for about a month then and wasn't completely new to TLD anymore but still had alot to learn and one stupid mistake after the other led to my ultimate demise.

 

That was awesome! Wish I could've played it the old way! The first aid kit was cool! So TLD but not!🙂

 

[ajb1978]

Oh this was back in 2015 I think and I rage quit pretty much. I was extremely frustrated by the total lack of documentation. I mean I get not having a tutorial, but the game didn't even explain the controls or how to get water. Like I had matches, I had tinder, I had fuel, and I'm like....pick up the snow. How do I get the snow? I spent so much time trying all kinds of options on the snow, freezing to death simply by trying to pick up the snow to boil water. Then I finally (incorrectly) concluded that somehow the devs made an egregious oversight, and there was no way to melt snow for water. At that point I was just done, because what kind of winter survival game doesn't allow you to melt snow for water? And that was that for like a month. Until I saw a YouTube video of someone playing and saw them starting a fire, and then realized the "melt snow" option was hidden behind an active fire. And now that I think about it, I kind of get it. Taking a pot and boiling up 2L of water from snow, that's a LOT of snow. If memory serves a mass of snow equals a mass of water like 15x the volume. So you'd be going back and forth adding a couple handfuls of snow to the pot over and over and over....and that would just not make for engaging game play. So I gave it a second shot, and being able to boil water was literally the key to unlocking the rest of the game's mechanics for me.

Of course now it's WAY different, these mechanics are well explained in Story mode, there's these forums, the Wiki, the Steam forums, a subreddit, etc. just rammed with tips and advice. But way back when this was a fledgling project? Not so much!

[Pencil]

I started shortly after the Episode 2 redux, before Vigilant Flame. I played mostly Pilgrim because of fear of the wildlife. It was a really great experience for playing the very first time though. That moment when you see a power line up ahead... there's still hope! Or you find a road and follow it hoping for some kind of shelter along the way. 

I was watching my brother it play it when we first bought the game. The spawn was Pleasant Valley, somewhere in the woods. He walked for a while and found a powerline and a road, and following it, eventually found the farmhouse. At that point, Hypothermia risk had appeared, and we were thinking we could die any second... had no clue there was a health bar lol. This was back when you could only see your health by going into the status screen or if your health was really low. Of course, we still had over 90% when we got into the house but had no idea lol. We were on the edge of our seats as we were just a few steps away from the door, expecting the screen to go black saying we died. Nope. I don't really remember anything else from first playing. 

[hozz1235]

I don't remember much, but one thing I clearly remember is, wayyy back when the Mystery Lake lake had weak ice spots all over and getting really wet!

[Lord of the Long Dark]

Started with voyageur and first few runs if I did 10 days I was happy. I remember originally always being way overweight with food because I hoarded it like a mule until I realized there is literally food everywhere so there is no need to stockpile it. Went right to stalker then and found it wasn’t that much harder than voyageur so went right to interloper and died all the time again and again and again and again. I didn’t know the jump from stalker to interloper is 1000X greater than from pilgrim to stalker. so I went back to stalker as an easy way to master the maps and then when I got the map knowledge secured,  I was able to survive interloper if I got to the forge early enough but if i didn’t get to forge within 12 days I usually ran out of supplies.  After that Every early interloper run was nothing more than a desperate struggle with food the entire time where either I made it to the forge and could live for hundreds of days or a surprise wolf attack ended the run before I got to the forge. 
  Now I don’t even worry about the forge or food. Depending on where I spawn I might go in 7 days or I might go in 30 days but once I do the forge run, the game is over- I can live indefinitely once I get that bow. 

Edited November 9, 2021 by Lord of the Long Dark

[Jynxer]

I remember when I got “locked out” of the dam for the first time. Was so mad cause I left most of my stuff in there. Had no clue that I could get back in. Then I couldn’t find my way out of the river, kept trying to follow the power lines. After that for awhile I was too afraid to leave areas for fear of not being able to get back. 

[mfuegemann]

Ha ha, the dam feelings were the same for me. And it took me a while to walk along the rim towards the other side.

My best memories are the ones referring to the mead diet (... I lost three days once...). It took me so long to understand the save mechanics in survival, that I made several trips from ML to FM, wondering about if I had not taken the walk yesterday already. 

[Glflegolas]

I have watched videos on this game as far back as 2017, but only purchased it in March 2019. Surprisingly, I still have my first save ever, which is a Voyageur run with ~140 days on it or so. I have moved Will Mackenzie all over Great Bear in that time. I did once lose a different Voyageur run (Survival Tutorial 1.0) after ~15 days or so during a blizzard on the Forlorn Muskeg. Ever since then, I don't trust that region.

Other than that I think I have lost my character five times. Twice in Stalker, both of those times were on camera (once in Broken Railroad, once in Ash Canyon), and three times in Interloper, twice to the wolves of Mountain Town and once to freezing in Coastal Highway. My current Interloper run has lasted ~75 days or so, which isn't bad.

[Stone]

I started with the storyline to learn the basics and found bunny sniping impossible . When I got to grey mothers I switched to the sandbox on voyager. That first survival run had lots of wonderful 'learning' experiences:

• The first time a wolf followed me home, growling at my back as my torch burnt lower and lower - it was terrifying!
• When I first tried a rifle by aiming it at a wolf without first putting a round in the chamber 🙄 the little click did not stop the wolf attacking me.
• I tried to shoot a bear from a 'safe distance'. I discovered bears are fast and bullets have limited effect.
• like @Jynxer I too got 'locked out' of the dam. I didn't panic as such but had left my bedroll inside and assumed I couldn't get back in. I ended up making a snow shelter in the cave down by the river using half my clothes. The next day I decided the game couldn't be that evil and went back to the dam and found a way back in. 🙃

Surviving to day 120, despite all those mistakes, led me to make a permanent switch to Interloper.

[TIMBERBEAR810]

My very first run I spawned in ML next to the logging trailers and looted them. I then followed the road to the broken fire tower assuming that there was something important at the end of the road. Finally by the time I reached the destroyed tower I had hypothermia risk and decided to just end the run and try again.

[odizzido]

My first runs were me trying to figure out what I can and cannot do.

[APixelatedLemon]

My first run was in pilgrim mode. I remember seeing both voyageur and stalker mode (This was before interloper and custom mode were added) and saw that hostile wildlife was a thing and think "Nope I don't want to deal with that" and went with pilgrim. 

I made it to about day 50 when I started to get bored without hostile wildlife so I started a new game in voyageur. Second day when wolves started spawning I pretty much instantly got pounced as I left the door. I ended up running around bleeding looking for bandages. couldn't find any and gave up before I died.

Went back to menu, delete voyageur mode save, back to pilgrim. 

[Bromstarzan]

I came down a steep slope, found a railway track, followed it. The game performance was as horrible as my survival skills. It was snowing, it was dark, it was cold. I died on the tracks while seing lights in the distance... To this day, I have no idea where that was... or what game mode it was (beta I guess).

Edited November 28, 2021 by Bromstarzan

[stirfoo]

That was the absolute best time in the game for me. It was all new. Everything was a fresh discovery. Watching the dials drop and not knowing what to do or where to go to keep them from dropping. That was awesome! One of the top 3 experiences with a new game, for sure. Incredibly elated that I managed to make a cup of hot tea, then horribly frustrated because I died in a blizzard. Haha!

[Library-Gremlin]

When I first started playing TLD, I had no clue what the indicators on the side were. I'd carry 90 pounds of resources for fire-starting everywhere and use all my food and water because I was afraid if any of the indicators hit red I'd instantly die. No sense of direction, really bad at shooting, and I only knew how to hunt by running into a wolf and taking the damage in the hopes I could kill it..............

[Morrick]

The earliest screenshot I've found in my archive, from October 2018. When the water tower in Milton Town was on the other side.

 

I have flashbacks.

I remember my very first run, in Mystery Lake, spawning near the trailers at the Logging Camp, heavy snow falling down, having no idea where to go, looting the trailers and taking literally everything, then going around aimlessly until I found the railway tracks, and then managing to not encountering any other man-made building before dying of hypothermia near the tunnel that connects with Forlorn Muskeg.

I remember, a few runs later, entering Forlorn Muskeg with near zero visibility due to a thick fog. I remember barely seeing the train tracks and following them, and then totally missing the open carriage at Poacher's Camp, and then the fog lifted, but weather quickly worsened and I found myself even more lost in what was my very first blizzard. I remember falling in the water through thin ice, managing to fumble my way over to Spence's, lighting a fire, drying my clothes, recuperating condition, only to fall in the water again in another spot and eventually dying of hypothermia.

I remember my first time in Hushed River Valley, where I managed to get lost even while consulting a map, and accidentally falling down a ledge while I was trying to place a campfire. Never walk backwards when you're trying to do that, folks. Lol.

I remember my first moose kill. It took me eleven rounds of the rifle at medium distance, and I'm still not convinced it was bad aim on my part. Either a bug in the game, or maybe ballistic vests are made from moose hide!

I remember my first time being mauled by a bear. I was getting out of one of the crossroads houses in Pleasant Valley before that area became Thomson's Crossing, and I literally stumbled on this bear that was coming from my left. That was probably the biggest jumpscare I've ever got while playing The Long Dark. I survived the mauling, miraculously, but I had to quit the game and relax because my hands were still shaking, really.

I remember silly errors I made even when I got more experienced. Like sleeping 12 hours outside in a bedroll but with weak clothes and at 20% condition, and fading into The Long Dark instead of waking up the next morning, because I didn't take into account that temperatures may fall dramatically during the night. Duh. Or when I experienced my first aurora the hard way, sleeping in the wrong spot of the Carter Hydro Dam (rookie mistake, I know, but in my defence I had never seen an aurora at the time, and didn't know what an aurora does when it kicks in).

I love exploration, and I don't mind using the detailed maps a few awesome people have put together over time, but that early-days feeling of just being thrown in a region and not knowing where to go is priceless, and that's why every time the developers add a new region I always explore it map-less the first time. It brings me back to a time where everything was new in The Long Dark.

Cheers!  

[turtle777]

Purchased TLD in May 2016. I started a run, but I have no recollection in what region. Got totally disoriented and just stumbled along until I died. After that, I didn't touch the game for probably another 2.5 years. Not even sure what made me buy it, but I clearly didn't know what it was all about. 

On the flip side, it was the best $10.61 I ever spent on a game 🙂

-t