Iterating on "Ranger" Custom Mode

[Guest jeffpeng]

Hello fellow survivors,

back in 2019 I proposed a few custom game modes here. I kinda liked Outcast, but it gets a bit dull after a time. I really enjoyed Ranger, however, and being one of the crowd that likes the Challenge of Interloper, but doesn't like half the game not being in it (and after I killed my current Interloper in the name of science!) I thought I might make  a few tweaks to this to try to keep the difficulty somewhere in the range of Interloper, as I found Ranger to be still a bit on the easy side, while also removing a few things that really do annoy me about the game (Cabin Fever, Survivor Monologue, Instant Decay, No Fishing). Since it is harder than Ranger I call this .... British Columbia Ranger. Yeah I know, dad joke.

I made a spreadsheet with a few notes. Still not sure if this will rival Interloper or not, but I'll give it a try. Any input is welcome, however. The code is 8NnM-fi8P-Gx92-C6mO-+OIB

What's changed compared to Interloper:

• BASELINE RESOURCE AVAILABILITY -> Medium instead of Low
  This is the most impactful change of all of them, and it makes the game easier in many more aspects than this setting suggests. It affects things as the containers on TWM and even if certain houses are present or not
   
• THIRST RATE -> Very High instead of Medium
  Makes water management harder, but more importantly limits the amount of consecutive sleep to 8 hours (iirc).
   
• AT REST RECOVERY RATE -> Low instead of Medium
  Reduces recovery while sleeping further, and hence should make hibernation not long-term feasible
   
• CONDITION RECOVERY RATE -> None instead of Medium
  Further reduces recovery potential
   
• CABIN FEVER -> No instead of Yes
  Because it's stupid
   
• ITEM DECAY RATE -> High instead of Very High
  To give me a bit more time to get my loot. I really came to dislike this stress mechanic.
   
• RIFLE AVAILABILITY -> Yes instead of No
   
• REVOLVER AVAILABILITY -> Yes instead of No
   
• FISH SPAWN CHANCE -> High instead of Medium
  I'd like fishing to be somewhat feasible
   
• WOLF SPAWN CHANCE -> Very High instead of High
  Mo wolfes, mo problems. Although: also more food later.
   
• WILDLIFE SMELL RANGE -> Very High instead of High
  Since we have more non-smelly food in the game this will give us more of a reason to use it.
   
• WOLF FEAR -> Low instead of Medium
  We have firearms. Removing torches as a mechanism of defense acts as a limited amount of counterbalance to that fact.
   
• WILDLIFE DETECTION RANGE -> Far instead of Medium
  Again: we have rifles and revolvers. This makes avoiding wolves altogether much harder.

I also won't be using feats, and the world spawn is of course random.

I could have made this some variant of Sleep Walking, but this should be a bit more forgiving while actually retaining the usefulness of herbal tea, possibly even emphasizing it.

I'll be back at some point reporting how this has turned out.

 

[Guest jeffpeng]

Well the first try was interesting:

Spawned FM near BR transition, late evening, snowy. No problem. Got to Spence's - no matches. Right - no fixed loot. Alright. Nothing at high blind, nothing to make a fire with at Poacher's. I make it to Trapper's in heavy fog, I'm frostbitten by now and have hypothermia - and then get run over by a moose. Not finding any water or ignition I die of thirst in the cabin. However: I got a survival bow and 10 rounds of rifle ammunition.

It's been a while since that happened to me. 😅

Second try: Spawned in CH, still no ignition, ran into a wolf at the fishing camp that I didn't expect. Right .... Stalker wolves. ^^

Edited December 28, 2021 by jeffpeng

[Guest jeffpeng]

So, number 3 is off to a promising start, currently camping on the Summit in TWM. Started in DP, and was lucky enough to find a flare at Hibernia, and later even matches in the mine and a revolver to boot. Still, getting to CH was a tour de force, and worn down to around 25% I found a bedroll at Quonset. From there on out it was rather straight forward, although since I can't just yolo it with the cold, and lacking decent clothes until now, it was quite a lot of fire hopping.

What I have learned so far ...

• Low at-rest recovery and no awake condition recovery with thirst set to high means you can recover 9% per sleep cycle using a normal bedroll. Assuming you get one of these in per 16 hours, we're looking at roughly 14% per day. That's too little to do hibernation, and not a whole lot to recover condition lost to other factors. It's still basically a free stim every two days if we're talking deadman. No numbers on actual beds yet, but I don't expect much more.
   
• Herbal tea accounts for about 3%, so I guess it's an additional 0.5% per hour of improved rest recovered.
   
• Loot is super random. Which is good. No internal or actual loot table will help you. Not even matches are guaranteed. This makes the start very hard.
   
• Wolves are just as random, and plentiful. With the increased smell and detection range you're getting deadman vibes.
   
• There's more loot than on Interloper, but not a lot. The quality however is better as you can find pretty much anything. It's just than density is as sparse as Interloper.
   
• The Summit is still so uber-packed as it would be on normal Stalker. So getting there early is just as op as in any Stalker run.
   
• Setting wolf fear to low really makes torches completely ineffective to scare them away.
   
• So. Many. Flares. And a lot of matches. Just in all the wrong places.
   
• Ammunition is plentiful. I've got like 40 revolver rounds on day 8, and 15 rifle rounds, plus 20 each from the Summit.

So is this comparable to Interloper? The start, I'd argue, is harder. Having no idea where to find key loot, especially matches, is pretty hefty. Wildlife is more dangerous and playing Interloper almost exclusively I'm getting thrown off by random surprise wolves all the time. But since the Summit is a thing I guess if you can get this done early enough the following days should be significantly easier as long as you don't freeze up somehow, like running into a wolf or a bear, or getting lost in a blizzard. Recovering from that would indeed take a lot of time. Also: having a knife this early, and a much better one at that, plus an actual rifle .... yeah. That skips the entire forging/crafting early game of Interloper. So .... yeah, it's easier than Interloper all things considered. But it's still nowhere as "easy" as Stalker since you can afford to run into a wolf just as little as on Interloper.

I'll keep this going for a while. So far.... I like it.

Edited December 29, 2021 by jeffpeng

[dbmurph22]

This is a fun combination of settings.  It's close to essentially Stalker Deadman or Stalker Low Recovery (personally I call that true loper because I think it should be low recovery for both).   Harsh, but you get some of the gear the game intended.  The lack of interloper guaranteed items spawns is underrated.  That's interesting.  The only thing is, as you alluded to, if you can get past some early difficulty, you can just get so nicely geared up.  Pretty nice as you're pushing for that, but kind of sad a bit of time after achieving it.  A boomerang.  Adding in a region limitation is an additional suggestion as that limits the cornucopia a bit.

Edit: like the title of the run type ("ranger")

Edited December 31, 2021 by dbmurph22

[Catlover]

I feel like I won't last long on this mode, though that's not to say I won't give it a shot. 

I play stalker frequently so the wolves shouldn't be an issue, though as I'm assuming they're as dangerous as on loper, I will have to be more cautious. 

The low recovery rate concerns me but it will be good practise for when I try DMC, whenever that may be. 

Definitely gonna try it later and I might let you guys know how I get on

[ajb1978]

On 12/28/2021 at 11:56 AM, jeffpeng said:

• CABIN FEVER -> No instead of Yes
  Because it's stupid