THE LONG DARK UPDATED to Version 2.03 & TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, PART ONE Released

[Admin]

Hello Survivors,

 

Last week, we launched Part One of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, the first paid expansion for THE LONG DARK’s Survival Mode. TALES will be released as an Expansion Pass in 6 parts over the next 12 months. The full Expansion Pass Roadmap is available here. We also created a Video that outlines everything that has been added in Part One. 

Each Part of the Expansion will include content that is exclusive to the Paid stream, and to get that content you need to buy TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORIES. The launch of each Part will also include Free updates to Survival Mode.

Please note that TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY is currently available on Steam and Epic Games Store, but it will be coming to consoles in the new year. More information is available in the Expansion Pass FAQ. 

 

PART ONE “FORSAKEN AIRFIELD”

The following paid features and content were included in PART ONE of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY:

• Far Range Branch Line. This transition region connects from Broken Railroad, linking Broken Railroad to Transfer Pass.
• Transfer Pass. This hub region provides access to Forsaken Airfield, and the two additional new Regions arriving later in the Expansion Pass campaign.
• Forsaken Airfield Region. An abandoned airfield on a vast snowy plain. It includes the Hangar, Control Tower, Ranger’s Cabin, and other points of interest. Watch for the Aurora.
• Tool Variants. Vaughan’s Rifle, Barb’s Rifle, Curator’s Rifle, Woodwright’s Bow, Spelunker’s Lantern. Modifications of the base Tools, with custom stats and cosmetics.
• Glimmer Fog. Beware this phenomenon. It comes during the day, and getting stuck in it for too long will trigger the new Insomnia Affliction.
• Insomnia Affliction. Too much time in the Glimmer Fog can affect your sleep patterns. 

Please note that when you first start your adventures in the Far Territory, you cannot access the new regions or transitions from the World Map until you have first found them in the world. No shortcuts! They will become visible after they have been initially discovered. 

For more details of each of these included features, please refer to the Roadmap page.

 

FREE DECEMBER UPDATE

Along with the contents of Part One for the paid Expansion Pass, the following free updates were applied to the base Survival game.

• Complete Loot & Resource refresh. All loot tables have been updated, and the location of in-world spawned objects has been refreshed. The locations and amounts of all high-value Tools and Items have also been modified. Do not expect things to appear in the same place, or quantity, as you may have experienced them before, and also know that an element of randomness to loot spawns is present in any game. Interloper balance has been preserved in the loot refresh. (Additional details below.) 
• Starting Spawn Points refresh. When you start a new Survival game, the locations you can potentially spawn in each region have been changed. Feel lost again.
• Visor Notes (Mementos). Notes will occasionally spawn under car visors (and other places). Finding these will unlock the location of supply caches or other items in the world.
• Improvised Crampons. You can now craft your own. Be cautious, Survivors – these Crampons are not quite as effective as the ones you find. 
• Doe. Female deer have been added to the game, replacing the majority of the Stag population.

 

FUTURE PARTS & UPDATES

Each new Part will add more items from the paid Roadmap to the game, and each Part’s free components will be added to the existing Survival Mode game. Each Part will be accompanied by a video and notes that explain what has been added. 

Before you purchase, please read the FAQ for more information about how the Expansion Pass will work.

 

SPLIT & CORE GAME OVERHAUL

With this release, we also rolled out a major change: splitting Story and Survival mode into separate games. This was a massive undertaking, done to ensure we can continue to update and maintain THE LONG DARK into the future.

This split also involved rebuilding many core game systems. In combination with other changes like the Resource refresh, you may find the game feels a bit different than it did. If you encounter behaviour that you feel seems very much out of character as compared to your previous experience, feel free to submit a ticket to our Support Portal. There will be bugs, and game balance/tuning will be an ongoing effort. We appreciate your patience. 

 

LOOT REFRESH

Normally we would not get so granular in our notes, but to help understand the new “baseline”, here are some more precise details about the Loot refresh:

• The majority of container loot tables in the game have had tweaks and updates, so you will find there are new items spawning that didn't used to spawn, and some rare items are slightly rarer.
• Positions of placed gear items have been refreshed, so expect to find things in different places to before. 
• Note that we do still have approximately the same amount of basic tools as before (hatchets, knives, prybars, etc), but their locations are updated.
• The quantities of plants is also unchanged (saplings, rosehips, reishi, etc).
• Weapons have had a significant rebalance – rifles are much rarer so they are no longer guaranteed in every region. Revolvers are now more common, and Distress Pistols are also found in a few more places than before.
• As has always been the case, it is important to note that most loot placements and containers have a large degree of randomness, and this does result in a significant variance of what is a “normal” amount of loot and what type of loot you get. So you can just have very lucky or very unlucky runs in the game.
• Interloper has had its loot positions refreshed and more position randomness added to its important items (like hammers) to add less predictability.
• Overall, Interloper’s difficulty should remain the same as before (if anything, it will be slightly harder given the increased randomness from the important item placements).
• On Interloper, guaranteed item spawns for items like matches have not been increased (or decreased), however, please be aware that there are random match spawns that can come from containers that might result in “lucky rolls” where you find more. This is not some thing that was changed for this update.
• If you find items that did not used to spawn an interloper in an interloper run, it is most likely a bug – we especially did not intend for weapons to spawn into interloper games (a bug we addressed in one of our earlier hotfixes).
• We have not adjusted the weather tunings for any of the Experience modes, so temperature range (which is quite broad) and temperature drop over time remain as they were before this update.
• We have intentionally removed prepper hatches for now, but they will return soon. 

 

SAVE GAMES

The split and core game overhaul means that old Survival saves are no longer compatible with the game. They can be continued (on Steam only) using the Time Capsule. 

If you would like to benefit from the new and future free enhancements and content added to THE LONG DARK’s Survival Mode, you will need to start a new game. If you would like to play TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, you will need to start a new game. 

Pre-split WINTERMUTE games should still work with the revised game.

 

NEW “THE LONG DARK” PRODUCT FAMILY

The split between Survival and Story has allowed us to create a new SURVIVAL EDITION product, which is a lower-cost, entry-level version of THE LONG DARK that only contains only Survival Mode.

From SURVIVAL EDITION, players can optionally upgrade to the paid Expansion Pass, TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, and/or can optionally upgrade to add the WINTERMUTE Episodes to their base game.

Each of the following games has its own in-game Home page with access to the revised in-game News system: THE LONG DARK, TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, WINTERMUTE, and SURVIVAL EDITION.

How to know which version you own:

• If you see a revised menu in-game when you start, and it says “TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY”, you have added the Expansion Pass to your game.
• If you see the Mystery Lake Trapper’s Cabin menu, and it says “DECEMBER UPDATE”, you have the base THE LONG DARK or SURVIVAL EDITION products, and you do not have the Expansion Pass.

If you owned THE LONG DARK prior to the December 5th split, you still own both Survival and WINTERMUTE, and do not need to repurchase them. You do not have to spend any more money, you still own all the things you owned before, and you will still receive future updates to WINTERMUTE Story Mode.

The free updates that are part of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY will automatically be applied to our base THE LONG DARK or SURVIVAL EDITION games, for free.

The paid updates that are part of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY require you to buy the Expansion Pass.

 

DETAILED CHANGELISTS

Due to the massive overhaul to the game, it is impossible to share every individual update or change that has been made to the game over the past year of work. In addition to all the aforementioned changes, we are also calling out these general areas of fixes and changes that we would like you to be aware of (each bullet point encompasses many individual fixes):

• Upgraded to Unity 2021.3.6f1, fixing numerous engine-side issues.
• General - Updated the game to use more asset bundles, improving load times and future update size.
• Audio - Cleaned up various audio to improve quality and consistency.
• Environment - Corrected multiple locations where the player could become stuck.
• Environment - Fixed multiple locations where items or projectiles could fall below the ground when dropped or shot.
• Environment - Fixed numerous clipping or missing texture issues.
• Environment - Fixed multiple unreachable item placements.
• UI - Ensured stats tracked the correct game values on Journal and Status screens.
• Save File - Updated the save system to better manage the size of saves, avoiding issues where saves could grow too large for safe cloud storage or become corrupted.
• Custom Game Mode - Fixed an issue where players were unable to reduce Cabin Fever Risk while Endless Night was enabled.
• Custom Game Mode - Reviewed all Custom Game Mode tuning values to ensure they are working as designed. 
• WINTERMUTE - Fixed sev eral issues in Wintermute missions that could cause a Player’s mission progress to become stuck.
• WINTERMUTE - Fixed an issue that would cause the Episode Progression stat for a save to display incorrectly when viewing a Load Menu.
• Steam Deck - Optimized general performance for Steam Deck.

 

FURTHER INFORMATION

For a list of Known Issues were are currently tracking, please go here.

For all bug reports and requests for help, please use our Support Portal.

Join our mailing list.

Follow us on Twitter.
 

[ChillPlayer]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! 👏

[yollarbenibekler]

Hinterland team is the best. Thanks for the info concerning the prepper caches, btw. Love you guys.

[Serenity]

Plant stuff also seems to be largely in the same locations. There may have been some small changes, but I found almost all rose hips, saplings, and such where they used to be.

Deer and human corpse locations however have been heavily updated. That's an interesting change.

Container locations themselves have been updated too. Sometimes things have only been moved across the room, but you can also find some additional backpacks and plastic containers. Some are also missing.

I did get a couple lucky random match spawns. From a sample size of one game it suddenly seems too much, but this could always happen. And it does offset not having all the guaranteed spawns in such easy locations.

[HexMedusa]

Thank you for releasing the change notes.  Would it be possible to include recipe changes for the sake of completion?

[yoamloco]

When the next update gets released, do we have to start a new saved game or we can continue on same existing saved file? Please and thank you.

[hozz1235]

LOVE IT!!!

[MarrowStone]

Thank you! I'm sure it was a painstaking process to split apart story and survival mode. But Im excited for what it means for the future of TLD! (and maybe a second game? :3) 

The patchnotes are highly appreciated, hopefully we get them sooner for Part 2. ^^ 

4 hours ago, Serenity said:

Deer and human corpse locations however have been heavily updated. That's an interesting change.

New environmental storytelling? Also it probably seemed like a good time to with the addition of Does into the game. It added a new corpse variant essentially. Plus they had a lot of new human ones to use after Part 3 of wintermute. 

[Admin]

2 hours ago, yoamloco said:

When the next update gets released, do we have to start a new saved game or we can continue on same existing saved file? Please and thank you.

Thanks for reaching out. The reason saves were not compatible following the Update is that "we’ve made many changes to the Save system, and the underlying architecture of the game itself, to improve, future-proof, and optimize it, and these changes mean that all “old” saves (meaning from a version of THE LONG DARK from before the Expansion Pass launch) will be incompatible with the new Save format." (This is taken from the most recent Dev Diary.) 

We won't be making these changes every time we release a new Part, and we will always try to keep saves intact whenever possible. Additionally, if this does ever need to happen in the future, we will be sure to give you ample warning. So enjoy your current run, and good luck Surviving in the Far Territory! 

[Glacia]

Thanks for the patch notes! 

[conanjaguar]

I’m particularly excited for the Cougar! (Although I don’t think I could bring myself to shoot it; if it isn’t immediately apparent, I’m a huge cat person!)

When is it coming? And will it be part of the free update, or a DLC creature?

And rifle spawns have been reduced? Sounds like a possible opening for the shotgun or bear spear!

[yoamloco]

5 hours ago, Admin said:

Thanks for reaching out. The reason saves were not compatible following the Update is that "we’ve made many changes to the Save system, and the underlying architecture of the game itself, to improve, future-proof, and optimize it, and these changes mean that all “old” saves (meaning from a version of THE LONG DARK from before the Expansion Pass launch) will be incompatible with the new Save format." (This is taken from the most recent Dev Diary.) 

We won't be making these changes every time we release a new Part, and we will always try to keep saves intact whenever possible. Additionally, if this does ever need to happen in the future, we will be sure to give you ample warning. So enjoy your current run, and good luck Surviving in the Far Territory! 

Thanks!!! 😀

[Gwynren]

Thank you!!!

[Mistral]

10 hours ago, conanjaguar said:

I’m particularly excited for the Cougar! (Although I don’t think I could bring myself to shoot it; if it isn’t immediately apparent, I’m a huge cat person!)

When is it coming? And will it be part of the free update, or a DLC creature?

And rifle spawns have been reduced? Sounds like a possible opening for the shotgun or bear spear!

If I had to guess, it'll probably come out with the Mountain Pass region, seeming as it's characterized as stalking in the ravines etc... also as entirely new animal, it should be among the most trickiest things to implement on the list... so my estimate is the "final update" ie December 2023, for both the animal and final region. At least putting it that far back in my guesses, I won't be dissappointed!

Ptarmigan on the other hand, I'd expect that one to roll out in one the "lesser" update packages mid-year. Perhaps even in the next patch. Probably along with the new low key bow so that that thing can be used for more than just rabbits

Edited December 15, 2022 by Mistral

[Gazbeard]

OK, All excellent stuff and I'm enjoying the refresh of the game very much.

However, concerning the notes about no changes to weather and temperatures, plus the "lucky or unlucky" loot runs, here's a few observations ...

I mainly play story mode and Voyageur Survival (Steam is only showing 2500 hours played, but it took me a further 1500 to record my Voyageur 1000 days YouTube series - did one of the TLD updates wipe time-played off Steam histories at some point?   I enjoy Voyageur and I'm a loot hobo in all games (don't mention Skyrim - p-lease) 😜 however, in my livestreamed TLD TFTFT new start I've had :

- Spawned into Mountain Town on the way from the plane crash - yaay familiar territory - in a blizzard, at night ... took 5 in-game days for the blizzard to pass (no increase in bad weather?  Hmmmm).
- Looted the MT map 100% - 12 cookpots, 3 hatchets, 2 hunting knives, 200-ish rounds of revolver and rifle ammo, bedroll in Orca, NO hacksaw, hammer, or firearms anywhere on the map.
- Transited to Mystery Lake - found a bedroll in the cave on climber's shelf, still no hacksaw or hammer.
- Looted Mystery Lake 100% - found a revolver, Vaughn's rifle, Mariner's pea coat, combat jacket and trousers, mukluks, another 6 hatchets and 4 hunting knives, low quality bow and 4 arrows, bedroll in camp office : still NO hammer or hatchet.
- Looted the ML end of the ravine as far as the broken trestle bridge (IRL vertigo stops me crossing that thing in a blizzard), still no hammer or hacksaw, but found my 4th jerrican of oil and a rabbit stole one of my arrows - never trust rabbits.

Was very surprised that Voyageur had neither hacksaw nor hammer in the dam (also no bedroll there but maybe because of the one in the camp office) but did get cookpot numbers 13 & 14 in there.
Although I have enough matches to not be a problem (and 2 mag lenses) there is definitely a lot less matches in Voyageur than there used to be, and blizzards are a lot longer lasting (apart from that initial spawn blizzard they're lasting 12-15 hours, instead of the previous 2-6 hours, but appear to be less damaging to clothes).

I would be a LOT less laser-focussed on the hammer and hacksaw if fire hardened arrows were in the initial DLC content (big disappointment, not gonna lie). 

So I'm now debating (on day 41) whether to head to PV or Coastal in search of the hammer and hacksaw before doing my first forge run.  This is a new all-time low for me ... not doing a forge run before day 14 and it's the major downer I'm having, everything else (despite no fire-hardened arrows) is all good but I am worried about all the reports of gear loss due to teleporting when sleeping - not happened to me (yet) and I hope the bug fix is in place before it gets me. 

Wondering when I'll be able to head to the new maps in the Far Territory (i.e. when will I get the hammer and hatchet to let me forge before I go there - I feel naked without a full quiver of arrows).

[Luca Loquax]

Yay Hinterland!  Happy! 

[Atanatar]

ON stalker i was not able to find new rifle in 100 days. Bummer I am unlucky I guess. I only found new lantern and is great.

Any tips for new rifle?  i went over 60% of map so far