curious about difficulty levels

[Lukin]

Hi community,

i´ve read about the 3 difficulty settings and would be curious of which one you prefer for your run(s)?

Am I right, when I say that Pilgrim-mode is the most realistic one because of no wildlife attacks?

I´ve read that wolves are very shy animals and avoid humans and if there´s is an encounter they would carefully sneak away and wouldn´t attack expect they are infected by rabies (so in Stalker-mode they all have rabies? )

As well humans are not a type of prey for them.

So the Voyager and Stalker modes are therefore a bit unrealistic and makes only more challenge for the game?

Or are there any further differences between those 3 modes?

Thank you

[Solnze]

Hello!

Yes, the main difference is in more challenging surviving, coz' in Stalker and Voyager animals can kill you, there are less food and other stuff, and you character becomes hungry and thirsty much more faster than in Pilgrim regime.

And some people think that Pilgrim-mode is less realistic than others where animals can attack you. And by the way if a person is deep in the wood and he has no guns or he is injured and wolves are hungry they will attack. There are many cases in history when wolves attacked and ate humans.

[Ryan CM]

Think of them less as experience levels with the game content, then as you play through one and learn more, you can move on to the next experience level As it explains in the game opening, due to the geomagnetic event that proceeds your adventure, the levels are not set up as realism levels for animal behaviour.

Welcome to the community!

[Alvinius]

I approached this game jumping in Stalker mode from the very start and have enjoyed it a lot. I hopped into Voyageur for a few plays and was curious of what the heck do I do with all this stuff, heh. I say give it a try and see if it your cup of reishi.

Stalker mode, I am really guessing the main difference is wolf behavior and the amount of calories and materials that you have underneath you when things go badly. In Stalker the wolves are relentless and very keen. They will chase you across the entire map if they are close enough. Multiples will attack.

The first step of a start and you may be cornered, most likely chased before you reach first base.

Blizzards are probably generally avoided by most, but in Stalker a blizzard can be a great ally.

Stalker starts, you are not thinking about a supermarket sweep. You are thinking where the heck can I find a blade of any kind and boil 5 liters of water. All of those other buildings and places on the map are future goals, icing on the cake.

currently ver 2.00

[grimreefer24601]

These are some of the potential differences besides animal aggression.

Ambient Wild Life Spawn Scale

Calorie Burn Scale

Closest Spawn Distance After Transition Scale

Decay Scale

Fatigue Rate Scale

Freezing Rate Scale

Gear Spawn Chance Scale

Hostile Wild Life Spawn Scale

Reduce Max Items In Container

Spawn Region Chance Active Scale

Thirst Rate Scale

Time Of Day Scale

Weather Duration Scale

[Lukin]

hi everybody,

thanks for your answers!

so, I´ve tried to start my first steps in Stalker-mode - my longest survival time was 2 days

everything was under control (hunger, thirst, ...) before a wolve has killed me...

Maybe it´s too early for me in Stalker, so I will try the Voyager-mode now. Hope the wildlife isn´t that agressive in there.

cheers lukin

[pikkue]

hi everybody,

thanks for your answers!

so, I´ve tried to start my first steps in Stalker-mode - my longest survival time was 2 days

everything was under control (hunger, thirst, ...) before a wolve has killed me...

Maybe it´s too early for me in Stalker, so I will try the Voyager-mode now. Hope the wildlife isn´t that agressive in there.

cheers lukin

Hey,

Prefer Voyager myself, as Stalker feels artificial and unnatural somehow.. For me Voyager is the best balance

[Lukin]

Hi pikkue,

oh my dear - tried a new run on Voyager and the wolves are still as agressive as in Stalker-mode !

maybe as a rookie i should try the game in pilgrim mode first...

But I can´t image how people survive the first days in Stalker without getting killed by wolves until you find some more

flares or the rifle for defending yourself against the hostile wildlife...

ARE THEY CHEATING?!?

[pikkue]

Na, try to spot the wolves, and then keep a huge distance, even in voyager I always try to keep about 20m to them.

But why not staying in Pilgrim if you just dont enjoy the wolves in TlD?

About 60% of all players play Voyager, only 12% Stalker. So those ppl who advertise it here are really the ones being deep into the game, but as well belonging to a small minority.

So relax and play it as you want

[Lukin]

roger that.

but i´ve ever tried to avoid the wolves and kept a save distance. The times I died of wolve attacks I barely had no chance because I went upon a hill and it stand right beside down the hilltop on the other side - bad luck as in reallife I think

Although I also don´t know how I can fight the wolve away when he jumped on your face trying to bite your head off.

Hitting left and right mouse-button doesn´t impress him very much

[pikkue]

Collect some tool, prybar, knife, hatchet, one of those.

Mash LMB until the bar fully filled up, then hit RMB.

With knife it takes about three times, usually one has about 60% then.

[Lukin]

ah ok, thank you - I will try on the next encounter

[simarson]

I cant play this game in other modes then Stalker. That feeling when you start of desperation has to be there all the time. After some time when I get to fat and comforted I start over because the deeper meaning for existing vanish.

[coryduran]

Lukin if you do a search function you'll find a really good guide on dealing with the wolves, I can't remember who wrote it, but search something like wolf guide or along those lines, had several points and strategies that sound like they would be useful for you.

With the right technique and a hunting knife you'll be able to survive any one on one wolf attack without losing too much health.

[Scyzara]

I have just surpassed my best survival time in Voyageur mode during my current Stalker run ( ) and decided to use this as an occasion to write down my personal feedback about the balancing of the three difficulty modes.

(Just some background information: I've only tried out Pilgrim for 10 days to get some feeling for it, but survived about 170 days in both Voyageur and Stalker yet).

If I was to rate the subjective difficulty of the current modes (to make things easier, I'll set Stalker as 10/10 as it is supposed to be the most difficult one), I would rate Pilgrim as 2/10 and Voyageur as 8/10.

Pilgrim feels much easier than the other two modes, yet you can still die from blizzards, getting hopelessly lost or starvation (thus 2/10). I believe this mode is quite well-balanced, it's supposed to be the easiest one and it is for sure.^^

What feels way more problematic for me is the current balancing between Voyageur and Stalker difficulty.

When I quit my 170 days Voyageur game to finally play Stalker, I expected Stalker to be difficult as hell and much more challenging than Voyageur. I thought I would have to learn a whole new repertoire of survival strategies to last more than 10 days, and I was looking forward to it.

However, even after surviving 170 days in both modes, I still fail to see any major differences between Voyageur and Stalker apart from a massive item scarcity in Stalker mode.

I have the faint impression that blizzards seem to occur a bit more often in Stalker, but it doesn't feel like an increase of more than maybe 20%. Regarding wolf behaviour or agression range I can't notice any difference at all. Wolf numbers seem to be increased a bit, maybe by 30-40%.

And that's just it.

If there are any further differences, they are either to irrelevant for me to notice or I obviously considered them to be "bad luck" and didn't see any particular connection to the difficulty settings.

I'm aware that I've already played quite a lot, know the maps (to some extent) by heart and thus consider things to be easier than a new player, naturally. Because of this, I don't consider it to be a good idea to increase the Stalker mode difficulty in order to set the Voyageur/Stalker balance "right".

In fact, I even love the current Stalker difficulty. I would call it challenging, but it's far from being incredibly punishing and killing you because of every minor mistake. (As you might guess, I'm not one of those players who are only happy when always on the brink of death in survival games.^^)

Unfortunately, this makes me unable to appreciate the current Voyageur difficulty.

I would really like to advice new players who start in Stalker mode and have massive difficulties to survive more than 5 days that they might better first try to learn the game mechanics in Voyageur mode - I guess that's one of the intended functions of Voyageur. But such an advice feels somehow hollow to me as I'm convinced they will struggle in Voyageur almost just as much as they currently do in Stalker.

In my opinion, it might be a good idea to downgrade Voyageur difficulty a bit (e.g. decrease the agression range of wolves) in order to bring it to a place somewhere in the middle between Pilgrim and Stalker where it is presumably supposed to be.^^

[Majales]

The guide by one and only ChillPlayer is here: Comprehensive Guide to Surviving Wolves in Stalker

[RogueRose]

Okay - am I the only one that finds the Voyager mode crazy hard? I hate to think what Stalker mode would be like. I cannot seem, for the life of me, be able to fight the wolves. And they seem like they're EVERYWHERE. I was doing left mouseclick and then right but that didn't work at all (I play on a laptop if that makes any difference) so I changed the key bindings - still left mouseclick but now space bar. The wolves ALWAYS get the upper hand on me and kill be me before I can get a stab/jab in. It is driving me NUTS! The other parts of Voyager I can get alright. The other thing that I noticed is that the one time I found a gun I tried to shoot the wolf that was running at me but the gun didn't work. What's the purpose of having a gun if you can't shoot something running at you that's trying to kill you? So frustrated.

[simarson]

The hardness of this game is very controvers. Im sitting her want the game to be much more hard. Getting killed by wolfs is almose none existing in my games. Also the fistfights is very rare. Decoy wait blow there head off pickup repeat if you have a rifle. If not decoy or throw flare. No problem.

Tone down the Voyageur mode. Leave the stalker as it is and give us a nightmare mode. The real learner in this sandbox survivel games is what killed you.

[Appo]

Okay - am I the only one that finds the Voyager mode crazy hard? I hate to think what Stalker mode would be like. I cannot seem, for the life of me, be able to fight the wolves. And they seem like they're EVERYWHERE. I was doing left mouseclick and then right but that didn't work at all (I play on a laptop if that makes any difference) so I changed the key bindings - still left mouseclick but now space bar. The wolves ALWAYS get the upper hand on me and kill be me before I can get a stab/jab in. It is driving me NUTS! The other parts of Voyager I can get alright. The other thing that I noticed is that the one time I found a gun I tried to shoot the wolf that was running at me but the gun didn't work. What's the purpose of having a gun if you can't shoot something running at you that's trying to kill you? So frustrated.

I'm playing in voyager mode and in 20 days of survival I've killed maybe 6 or 7 wolves. Theorically killing a wolf it's easier than killing a deer because when it will attack you you just have to wait for the wolf to be enough close to you and then Bam! a single shot in the head and you will kill it.

The condition of you rifle is the most important thing you have to take care of, you can kill in one shot both deers and wolves if your rifle is between 90% and 100% condition otherwise you will just hurt them and eventually they will die from blood loss.

when the rifle is in a bad condition ( 70%, 60% etc.) is not even able to make the wolf stop and escape, the wolf will attack you and finishing the work with your knife is the only option. so my advice is to keep you rifle perfectly functioning both for hunting and defense. hope this will help you

P.S sorry for my english :mrgreen: