Playing Silent Hunter Stalker; Harder Than Today's Interloper

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I wanted to see what The Long Dark looked back in the day, so I tried the very first version for a bit. Just exploring Mystery Lake alone wasn't enough for me though, so I am playing Silent Hunter with PV, ML, and CH.

I play Interloper on the current build and do just fine. However, Silent Hunter Stalker is insanely hard. There are TONS of wolves, and the bears are like Hunted part 1 bears. 

I jumped right into Stalker for the first try. I spawned in Coastal Highway on the edge of Jackrabbit Island. There were three wolves very close by in the direction of Misanthrope's homestead. I was quite surprised that the game would allow me to spawn that close to wildlife. (On my next run, I would find out that you could spawn even closer to wolves and bears than that; see the two pictures.) I looted the house on the island and then looted the fishing cabins, where I ran into two wolves. Got them away with a flare and journeyed towards log sort on the ice, looting fishing cabins along the way.

A wolf was eating a deer in front of me on the ice, so I kept my distance to get around. However, the wolf would rather fight me than eat that deer. Instead of turning around and growling at me like today's wolves, it left the carcass and started stalking me immediately. I lit my last flare to scare it away, and decided to grab some meat and deer skin since the wolf is gone now. 

When I finished, I continued my journey. The wolf came back, but the flare was still burning, so I scared him off again. After dealing with the wolf, I headed for the nearest fishing cabin to loot. Three seconds later, dense fog set in. It happened so fast that I almost lost my way; luckily, I never took my eyes off of the hut, so all I had to do was just walk forward. I looted the place and decided to stay a while and wait for the fog to clear. I can't see a thing outside. I light a fire and sleep for some 2 hours I think. When I wake up, the fog is still present, but I hear something running. It gets louder and closer. I remain on my bedroll in the center of the hut crouched, unsure of what is happening. Then, the face of a bear glitches through the wall for a second. Scared me so bad. 

How did the bear find me??? Do predators hunt you down while you are sleeping inside? The weird thing was that the fishing hut was not the one near Misanthrope's homestead. It was the one closest to that hut, but in the direction of log sort, so a pretty long ways away from the bear cave. 

Anyways, I sleep for a while until the fog clears. However, its almost night now. My fire is out and I have no more fuel. It's basically pitch black outside and I have no flares. No way am I going to try to make it to some place warm with the bear somewhere out there. So, I basically throwaway the run by sleeping until morning, and of course froze to death. 

Run 2, spawned in the pictures below. I survive for a while, looting fishing cabins, jackrabbit island, Misanthrope's homestead, and fishing cabins, and am really healthy. I come to the fishing hut closest to the bear cave at Misanthrope's homestead and sleep there for an hour as a test. I wanted to see if the bear would charge me again if I did so. Of course, the bear is nowhere near the hut when I fall asleep. When I wake up, sure enough, I hear and animal charging. It's the bear. I step out and get attacked on purpose since I wanted to know what the animation looked like, but when I tried to force-stop the game so that it wouldn't save, my progress is lost. So either you are not supposed to do that, or I actually died from the bear attack. 

Run 3, run through Coastal Highway just to get to PV (since it's locked on main screen). I make it with burning one flare to get through all of the wolves. First thing I see in PV is 3 wolves below. I light another flare and run through, meeting another wolf at the crossroads. I get rid of him and continue on to the barn. Everything seems quiet there. The next day, I exit the building with 2 wolves outside and the bear. Luckily, I was able to maneuver around them without being seen (I have no flares at this point). I continue walking and another wolf spots me. I missed him because of a hill of snow and the hay bales. I try to run to the farmhouse to get away but he catches up to me. I lose the fight and die. 

I am on a good run right now though with over 6 days I believe. I started in Alan's cave ML and took down the Carter Hydro Dam wolf with a flare and a rifle I found in there. On to PV and fortunately, the path from the transition cave to Signal Hill to the farmhouse does not cross paths with wolves (the ones on the road before Signal Hill are easy to avoid). I am camped at the farmhouse, curing hides and hoping I can take a trip to the barn without getting eaten. 

The video is a recent spawn that I found hilarious and perhaps slightly dangerous.