Thoughts on the New Regions

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

2 hours ago, Semple Fi said:

Could always go pilgrim

Maybe I will.

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

And by the way, I just found a revolver and ten bullets on my interloper run.  Is that intentional on Hinterland's part, or a bug?  It really doesn't help very much (or maybe at all) after you get high level archery, so I could see it becoming part of interloper.

[conanjaguar]

@I_eat_only_wolf_meat

It’s probably a bug. I believe it was mentioned somewhere in the latest patch notes.

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

8 minutes ago, conanjaguar said:

@I_eat_only_wolf_meat

It’s probably a bug. I believe it was mentioned somewhere in the latest patch notes.

I looked at the patch notes.  Didn't see anything about revolvers but maybe I missed it.

[Leeanda]

3 hours ago, I_eat_only_wolf_meat said:

And by the way, I just found a revolver and ten bullets on my interloper run.  Is that intentional on Hinterland's part, or a bug?  It really doesn't help very much (or maybe at all) after you get high level archery, so I could see it becoming part of interloper.

Might come in handy for the bunnies if you can't find stones.  

You could tweak the interloper settings a bit. Not sure if it'd help with the fog though.

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

2 hours ago, Leeanda said:

You could tweak the interloper settings a bit. Not sure if it'd help with the fog though.

This is just plain old interloper, rather than a custom game with interloper settings.  As far as I know I'm stuck with whatever the devs assign to interloper.  Maybe next run I'll do a custom.

[Kranium]

On 12/18/2022 at 9:37 PM, Glacia said:

Also, the fallen helicopter not too far to the airport it's a perfect choice. It offers perfect wind shield and you can make a campfire inside, there is even a bed inside.

The only problem could be the fog, it's very easy to get lost even if you are not far from the hangar.

When you have clear sightlines, drop an item (or spraypaint an arrow) at the helicoper which points perfectly at the airfield. Aim, auto-walk, and Bob's your uncle.

[Leeanda]

9 minutes ago, I_eat_only_wolf_meat said:

This is just plain old interloper, rather than a custom game with interloper settings.  As far as I know I'm stuck with whatever the devs assign to interloper.  Maybe next run I'll do a custom.

I

 

10 minutes ago, I_eat_only_wolf_meat said:

This is just plain old interloper, rather than a custom game with interloper settings.  As far as I know I'm stuck with whatever the devs assign to interloper.  Maybe next run I'll do a custom.

Well it does seem a shame to go all that way to see..well ,fog!    On the other hand you did go all that way,so I don't blame you for not restarting.

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

OK, here's a weird one.  Does anyone else see the trees "move" as you walk closer to them?  Some of them seem to be off of vertical by 10-15 degrees, and when you walk closer they start straightening up.  It's a very smooth looking animation, rather than a choppy transition from one state to another.  It's genuinely weird.

Also, I found a honest-to-goodness, store boughten hunting knife in Hushed River Valley.  This is a huge advantage in interloper.

[xanna]

[Dan_]

Well, I just spent some good 40 days on FA with my new long-term Loper save (Second try, first spawn was on release week, and I found a hunting knife and bullets on vanilla Loper and no hacksaws, abandoned that save) and I think I can provide some initial thoughts on the region.

What's there to like?

First off, I absolutely love the expansiveness and overall feel of the region. The openness is reminiscent of one of my favourite regions, Forlorn Muskeg. There's plenty of sticks to be had around the forested edges and nearly no firewood available closer to the central interest points of the map, so hanging around the Final Approach or the Surveyor's burnt cabin is not really an option long term. but it does provide a fun back and forth between there and the airfield outbuildings. 

I accidently ate raw bear meat while crafting a few arrows on Broken Railroad during my prep time for the airfield, therefore I had a lot of little friends in my belly arriving there. I did a quite intensive routine of exploration and hunting the first few days, because I knew I had to accumulate food and settle down somewhere to withstand the last few days with basically no stamina and little condition margin to spare. So I'm familiar with most locations and even mapped a good chunk of the region myself. Love pretty much all the cabins, I know people have been complaining about the lack of workbenches but I honestly don't mind, the nicer cabins ( Mindful and the other one at Drift Island ) have almost an "airbnb upstate cottage" feel to them, so I think not having a workbench there fits. 

Love that we can now loot the planes and choppers, and honestly the region itself is really well done and has a really well thought out layout. I also approve of the extra-long transition which honestly does feel like a trek, albeit one with a not-so pleasant destination waiting at the end.

Plenty of opportunities for the forthcoming safehouse customization. Imagine if we could rebuild Surveyor's Memory, or find a ready made foundation and some materials laying around a scenic and currently wild corner of the map? Having few shelters is actually a nice feature here. 

Love the new more random loot as well. Took me a good damn while to find a hammer ( had to traverse 5 regions  AC-TWM-PV-ML-MT), but it sure felt awesome finding it.

Transitionless buildings, all of them. Awesome things to watch a blizzard from, Mountaineer's Hut vibes from Mindful and Island Cottage, these are S-Tier buildings. 

What I honestly think needs work

Glimmer fog + Insomnia - The effect is really cool and well done, it was really framey for my computer the first time it happened but I think some shader caching took place and now it's silky smooth. What I dislike is that insomnia has almost no practical detriment that I can think of and the frequency which the fog triggers coupled to the frequency and duration of the snowstorms. I can't remember a pair of consecutive days that either of them didn't happen, and for a new region I'm trying to experience and explore it's very annoying sitting on a cabin munching on 5 days old meat waiting for the weather to clear a bit so you can do some hunting. Make it 30 degrees colder, but I think the fog/blizzard combo needs an adjustment. They're not hard to deal with and won't kill your character, but they do make exploring very frustrating. 

Lack of predators - Saw and killed a moose ( won't spoil location ), killed the bear and lost his corpse and several deer and doe. Honestly, I think I saw and killed less than 10 wolves at this point. At this rate, it's almost like playing pilgrim because you really don't have to fear anything. The wolves seem to patrol around specific interest points, so that's already good, increase pack size specially in good locations near the roads and main cabins. The choke point near Angler's Den with 4-pack of wolves springs to mind, make getting to the nice places a true gauntlet. 

With all that said I honestly think the expansion it's well worth the price, specially given there's more upside to come in the form of update drops. Map is huge and there's tons of new assets and terrain to explore, I really can't complain about the quality or the price, I do think maybe some adjustments are needed to make the new regions a bit more challenging but I also trust HL's team to do it as time goes. 9/10

Scientific and unbiased region Tier-list that is objectively the truth:

S - TWM, AC, HRV, FM

A - PV, ML, CH, DP, FA

B - BR, BI, MT, BLR

Edited December 26, 2022 by Dan_
Typos

[yoli]

Hi! Here are my thoughts on the Far Territories, first iteration after 30 days of Stalker play in Forsaken Airfield (FA) mostly. I overall enjoyed the experience even though I had mixed feellings initially, over time the region grew on me and was more and more interesting. Here is what I liked, then what I liked less, I hope this will help designers for the next iterations!

What I Liked
- DLC! Finally a DLC to prolong the TLD adventure!
- New music: the additional atmospheric music is very cool and fits well.
- See through windows: finally, this is really cool, no need to get outside to see how the weather is like!
- Auto-close doors: I don't know if this is new but I just noticed it, nice addition!
- Beautiful building design overall, along with the aircrafts.
- Very nice connector region before reaching FA, with the station. Nice little map and buildings.
- Drift Island in Forsaken Airfield is really cool, the most pleasant place of all the map in my opinion, or should I say the least hostile.
- FA region is challenging and disconcerting initially, but gets better and better as we get to know it.

What I liked less
- Long way to FA has not a very interesting design (except the last connector region with station). I am not against the long way to get there, but I would have liked it to be more interesting. There are still ways to improve these areas in the next iterations I guess.
- Glimmer fog: I personally don't like gameplay features relying on hindered visibility. I had this fog plus the regular fog quite often in my gameplay and well, I am not a fan of this, I think there are other ways to make the game challenging while still being able to enjoy it visually.
- Insomnia implementation could be different I think. First it is not very penalizing as was mentioned already, but it also lasts a long time (26 hours...) which is without any logic. Also out of logic is the insomnia affliction in itself, as when having enormous physical efforts to provide all day, the least likely affliction we may have is not to be able to rest. I think insomnia could be implemented differently, like happening only during glimmer flog and with effect connected to the actual physical condition (which may already be the case).
- There are at least 2 areas in FA where 2 wolves are patrolling in a corridor: I had the impression to play an arcade game This kind of design breaks the immersion in my opinion.
- Buildings are beautiful but of little use for several of them. After their initial discovery and loot, they present no interest anymore. This is a general remark I'd have on TLD, not only this extension. I believe there could be ways to make buildings more interesting so players may want to go back to them. For example by making some areas stuck/hidden and open-able only with certain tools or keys. Or making a coffee machine work only when electricity is on etc. There may be plenty of ways to make players want to go to buildings after their initial discovery, I'd love to see these areas explored in the next iterations.
- Wildlife is scarce and difficult to track because of large open spaces. This makes hunting very difficult.

Overall the DLC is promising and I am eager to see the next steps!

Edited December 27, 2022 by yoli

[past caring]

Maybe things will change by the time that the full TFTFT jigsaw is in place, but for the present I'm not seeing a great deal of gain from FA. It looks fantastic but flatters to deceive in my view....

Game is sparse, and though there's some decent loot, there's nothing unique or "must have". Yes, there's the forge - but there's also forges in FM and BR which I'd need to walk past to get to FA and they don't have the glimmer fog issue.

i fully accept that the picture is likely to be very different by the time all of the DLC is added and TFTFT is complete, but as things stand, my view of FA is that it's not a region to spend any time in until you're a little bit established and have some decent gear - and by the time you've achieved that, there's more productive regions to visit.

 

 

[Shadox]

2 hours ago, past caring said:

Maybe things will change by the time that the full TFTFT jigsaw is in place, but for the present I'm not seeing a great deal of gain from FA. It looks fantastic but flatters to deceive in my view....

Game is sparse, and though there's some decent loot, there's nothing unique or "must have". Yes, there's the forge - but there's also forges in FM and BR which I'd need to walk past to get to FA and they don't have the glimmer fog issue.

i fully accept that the picture is likely to be very different by the time all of the DLC is added and TFTFT is complete, but as things stand, my view of FA is that it's not a region to spend any time in until you're a little bit established and have some decent gear - and by the time you've achieved that, there's more productive regions to visit.

 

 

In my Opinion, you dont have to be flooded with loot or unique things to justify visiting a region. Its about exploration. And how much fun it is to stay and live in a region. And i had alot of fun exploring FA, its all open in the middle, with forest-y cliffs on the edges, has a bit of everything and feels like a better, more varied version of PV. And a pretty unique map design so far.

If more stuff to explore is added over the months, even better. But its completely fine for me as it is now. Could be my love for the Game but FA alone is even worth the 17,49€ i paid for TFT.

And also, FA can have sort of unique loot.

I found Noisemakers on a Shelf in the Hangar. Not on my Interloper though, dont know if i was just unlucky or thats just a possibility for Stalker and below, but its amazing that you can find it there.

[past caring]

@Shadox - don't get me wrong, I will visit FA. And I'm not moaning about what I paid for the DLC - no complaints about that at all.

But my priority is to survive (I'm not massively great at the game 😁) and so at the outset I'm after getting hold of the stuff that's going to help me with that - some decent clothing, something that will allow me to fight off the wolves or at least scare them away without having to take damage and something that will allow me to carry a bit more gear about....

I did a couple of thorough Pilgrim recces of FA and of the things I actually need, I only came up with two* - the revolver and combat pants (I think I might have actually found something like 4-5 combat pants, but you can't wear more than two at a time) so as things stand, until something else is added, I'll probably have to stick with my usual PV - TWM - AC start for non-Piligrim runs in order to get myself to the point where I'll head to FA. That's all I'm saying really - in terms of where things are with the game right now - I don't see a huge amount that would make PA worth an early visit.

But doubtless that will change as more of the DLC is released......

(*oh - and I did find the same thing that you did in both runs. Now if that means that *thing* is a guaranteed find in PA, it might well make it a worthwhile early-mid game visit. Certainly worth having that before visiting some of the regions I'll be wanting to go to..... 😉)

ETA, having just checked, it seems that the blueprints for that item are now with us from the outset but that we still need the specialist workbench to make them......hmmm

Edited January 3, 2023 by past caring
to add something

[DaGnome91]

I wonder if I passed over it without seeing it or if I really didn't see any in the main Hangar... On which shelves did you both find any noisemaker? @past caring@Shadox

[Shadox]

3 hours ago, past caring said:

@Shadox - don't get me wrong, I will visit FA. And I'm not moaning about what I paid for the DLC - no complaints about that at all.

But my priority is to survive (I'm not massively great at the game 😁) and so at the outset I'm after getting hold of the stuff that's going to help me with that - some decent clothing, something that will allow me to fight off the wolves or at least scare them away without having to take damage and something that will allow me to carry a bit more gear about....

I did a couple of thorough Pilgrim recces of FA and of the things I actually need, I only came up with two* - the revolver and combat pants (I think I might have actually found something like 4-5 combat pants, but you can't wear more than two at a time) so as things stand, until something else is added, I'll probably have to stick with my usual PV - TWM - AC start for non-Piligrim runs in order to get myself to the point where I'll head to FA. That's all I'm saying really - in terms of where things are with the game right now - I don't see a huge amount that would make PA worth an early visit.

But doubtless that will change as more of the DLC is released......

(*oh - and I did find the same thing that you did in both runs. Now if that means that *thing* is a guaranteed find in PA, it might well make it a worthwhile early-mid game visit. Certainly worth having that before visiting some of the regions I'll be wanting to go to..... 😉)

ETA, having just checked, it seems that the blueprints for that item are now with us from the outset but that we still need the specialist workbench to make them......hmmm

Ahh, yeah now i understand what you mean. The AC visit is one of the things i always do pretty early too. 5 kg more carry capacity is just too good especially when you want to do loothauls from other areas. Also just as important on Interloper as it is in other difficultys because it makes wearing those heavy fur clothes easier, even when theres not much loot to haul FA wouldnd be the first choice to visit for me as well. Its even colder than PV, its mostly around -60 degrees on Interloper. I did visit it around the 120 Day mark, so after temperature drop and nearly died several times. Pretty sure its the coldest or among the coldest areas on other difficultys as well so gearing up before entering FA is always a good idea.

I did go in completely blind so chosing it after every other area except the timberwolf areas, but loot was even better than milton. Maybe even better than TWM peak, i did find lots of food, lots of meds, but no tools and bad cloths in TWM. And my first and only 2 thin wool sweaters have been in the suitcases in FA Hangar. Also 2 Combat Pants, found 5 in total. And a Flaregun nearby, but that *thing* was nowhere on that save. So its not a guaranteed drop, at least not on Interloper. I did find it on my Voyager though. 3 in total, but i dont remember what exact shelf that was @DaGnome91. It was on the ground level, i can say that for sure.

Oh and another thing that stands against an early FA visit is those Blizzards. I often had Blizzards lasting for 2 days, and one of the times that got me almost killed was a sunny day turning into a blizzard swiftly when i was exploring the east part. I stumbled upon Justys Hovel at 30%ish health, anything less than full animal clothes, double bear coat and some birch tea would've killed me.

[Glflegolas]

I left Forsaken Airfield and went on a bit of an exploration spree, stopping in Ash Canyon for the backpack, Blackrock to make some ammo, Timberwolf Mountain for the summit, and Hushed River Valley to... well, chillax! I will return to Forsaken Airfield in the not-too-distant future.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Forsaken Airfield; it's probably my second or third favourite region. Still, I don't think I'll ever enjoy it as much as Hushed River Valley. From an aesthetic POV, that region is just... perfect!