Part Six -- Setting Expectations around Safehouse Customization [Spoilers]

[Raphael van Lierop]

This thread containers spoilers about how Safehouse Customization will work when it is introduced in TALES, Part Six. Don't read this if you don't want to know how the system will work. We'll be sharing more info in the update video.

***

Hey all,

 

Here are some details about the upcoming Safehouse Customization feature coming in Part Six of TALEs. This isn't meant to be a super exhaustive list or FAQ, but I will try to answer questions you have in response to this information. Just post them in this thread.

 

I also want to say that we definitely have a list of improvements we'd still like to make, but we need to get this first iteration out to you, and then we'll have a better idea of how far to push some of these other improvements. Once the update goes live, we'll create a new thread here in the forums to take all your feedback on things you have encountered that are glitchy, or items you'd like to see added, or functionality you'd like to see modified. For now, the system will launch as I'm describing it below, and we think it'll be best for it to have some time "in the wild" before we make further changes to it.

 

FYI -- creating this system involved touching every single interior asset in the game, and every single interior scene, as well as creating some new UI, a lot of new items, and modifying other existing systems to be compatible with Safehouse Customization. The game wasn't built with this feature in mind, and frankly I'm surprised it works as well as it does. The team is still fixing a lot of stuff and the test team is validating everything, but with a feature this big we just know some stuff will slip through. Sorry about that in advance.

 

Here are some notes to keep in mind:

 

* There will be bugs. We are fixing them as quickly as we can, but I'm sure there will be some weird edge cases or situations we didn't encounter in testing. Please be patient, and report any issues you encounter to the Support Portal (when the update goes live).

 

* There are over 800 items that can be moved, broken down, and in some cases, built using this system. There are over 120 interior scenes that can be turned into Safehouses, along with several specific "exterior interiors" like the Mountaineer's Hut in Timberwolf Mountain, and the Lookout Towers.

 

* There are about two dozen places in the game that you cannot build Safehouses in. These include, (a) most caves, (b) the Riken, (c) some of the transitions (like the Mine section between CH and PV), etc etc. We did our best to make as many locations in the game "Safehouse-able" as possible.

 

* Around launch we'll publish a list of all the locations in the game that can be used as Safehouses, but in general it's everything apart from a couple of dozen fairly obvious places as I mentioned above.

 

* There may be locations within Safehouse-able interiors that are blocked off from Safehouse placement and editing. This applies mainly to larger interiors like Carter Dam or the Whaling Station (Hibernia) in Desolation Point. We also generally don't let you destroy or move very large metal objects or props that don't make sense, so this can impact some of your decisions about where you can place stuff.

 

* In general, you can move most existing furniture items and props around.

 

* You can remove Clutter (like shredded papers on the ground you see in some of our spaces), and you can currently repair a LIMITED number of broken cabinets, etc. Currently you can repair a lot of the kitchen cabinets that have missing doors or doors that are stuck open. Repairing restores them to their "original" state, and also restores all the container slots (so a cabinet that had been missing a door and just had an empty space, now has the door and the door becomes a valid container for stuff).

 

* You can repair the roof of the Mountaineer's Hut. Yay!

 

* Repair is a very intensive feature to implement so we've tackled some of the things we know are high-value or very much desired (hence the previous bullet about the Hut), but we probably won't be able to support repairing everything before we launch this feature. We'll continue updating it with additional Repairs in the new year.

 

* In general, you can take most decorative items (ex. wall hangings, vases, plates, etc.) and add them to your Pack. They have weight so you will want to account for that when you move them around. The Travois will probably come in handy for this. 

 

* Items that only have a Decorative value will live in a certain part of the Inventory, and won't appear in the General tab to avoid your inventory being cluttered with a bunch of random stuff that doesn't have gameplay value. 

 

* When you drop decorative items in the world, they spawn a small Decoration Box, because these items don't exist as "gear items" outside of Safehouses the way normal gear items (like food, or tools, or clothing) do, so this is the best way for us to handle dropping them outside of Safehouse-able spaces.

 

* We have added a new Furniture Workbench, and Woodworking Tools. You need these to craft new Furniture items. You have to craft the Furniture Bench. You have other find the Woodworking Tools.

 

* We've added a range of Rustic styled items (including chairs, tables, dressers, beds, etc.) that you can construct. You can place furniture items in the location where your Furniture Workbench exists. We've also added a series of new Decorative items.

 

* Crafting Workbenches cannot be moved, but the Vice can be removed from an existing Workbench, and then used as a raw material in the construction of a new Workbench. This means you can build a Workbench in a location that is more useful to you, but only by sacrificing an existing bench, so there are still only ever going to be a certain number of Workbenches in the world. When you remove the Vice from an existing Workbench, it becomes a regular table.

 

* You can put things on the floor, the walls, on top of other items, etc. but every item has info that tells it where it can and cannot be placed. This is to avoid silliness.

 

* You can craft a Framed Photo from photos you take using the new Camera. This doesn't really have much to do with Safehouses specifically but I think it's a very cool feature so I wanted to share it. Go nuts.

 

* Corpses can be Respectfully Removed as part of general Safehouse clean-up. We opted for this solution because every other implementation exposed the possibility of doing disrespectful things with corpses and we don't want that in our game.

 

* You can still Break Down items to get resources from them when in regular gameplay. When you're in Safehouse Edit mode, you can Destroy items which goes quickly but you don't get any resources from it. This was to give you a way to clear areas quickly without making it magical or without some reasonable trade-off. If you want to harvest things for resources, don't destroy them in Edit mode.

 

* You can't destroy containers that have items in them. For example, if you want to destroy a cabinet but there are items in one of the drawers, you will have to remove the items first. Keep in mind that if you destroy an item in a Safehouse, you can't rebuild it, so please be careful what you destroy because you may not be able to get it back.

 

* This feature is very memory intensive, so it's very likely there will be a hard limit on consoles for how many items you can have inside an interior. Most PC players should be fine, but it partly depends on your spec. We're still figuring out exactly what the right limits are for console. It'll still likely be in the 100s of items per scene. The Switch will be the most restricted due to hardware limitations.

Hopefully that info clarifies some of how the Safehouse Customization feature will work.

 

- Raph

[Grieger]

Just the clutter removal alone is going to be nice. Any chance we'll have some way (I know it sounds stupid but...) to maybe obtain or make holiday decorations, however post-apocalyptic they need to be to fit in? 

[Ghurcb]

24 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

* You can repair the roof of the Mountaineer's Hut. Yay!

Would that affect the temperature inside the hut, or is it just a decorative change?

[Raphael van Lierop]

5 minutes ago, Grieger said:

Just the clutter removal alone is going to be nice. Any chance we'll have some way (I know it sounds stupid but...) to maybe obtain or make holiday decorations, however post-apocalyptic they need to be to fit in? 

Not at launch, but let's see what we end up doing long-term.

[Raphael van Lierop]

7 minutes ago, Ghurcb said:

Would that affect the temperature inside the hut, or is it just a decorative change?

I'm actually not sure but I think it might be mainly decorative at the moment.

[ManicManiac]

@Raphael van Lierop

Thank you for the informational update.
The system you describe is already much more in-depth than I had previously imagined.
This really does sound fantastic.

I know I'd said as much in my thoughts on the October Dev Diary...
but for me (and after reading this thread, I see that I was right to think so), this is indeed an absolute slice of fried gold!

(I suppose it might go without saying) I love being able to just live on Great Bear Island (so to speak).
The player being able to take ownership of a space and make it their own, sounds like a wonderful way to further enrich that experience.

Thank you and the entire team.
It sounds like a lot of really heavy lifting... and I very much appreciate it.

Edited November 15 by ManicManiac

[Lemonhartsour]

Any info on light source type stuff you can share? I know I have probably exhausted this point but it would be nice to have candles or something similar to light interior spaces for longer term. I am very excited for the update! This and the camera were my most anticipated things with the DLC, so I am happy to hear the level of depth the system goes into. 

[Raphael van Lierop]

1 hour ago, Lemonhartsour said:

Any info on light source type stuff you can share? I know I have probably exhausted this point but it would be nice to have candles or something similar to light interior spaces for longer term. I am very excited for the update! This and the camera were my most anticipated things with the DLC, so I am happy to hear the level of depth the system goes into. 

We have plans for Candles but they didn't make it into the update as we just had too much other stuff to complete. We might still make them in another round of updates to the system, but there are no new light sources included in the first pass of the system.

[Leeanda]

Thank you for all the work you've put into this.,it sounds a lot more comprehensive than I thought it'd be..awesome..

I've been chopping wood and ferrying it around to some of my favourite places already😁 

Just one thing though...does that mean I can't have a regular workbench and new one in the same house?.. and if I make a bed in a basement can I take it upstairs or am I limited to that specific room.. I'm thinking of pv farm ,because it has a separate loading screen down there?.sorry if it's a daft question,the caffeine hasn't kicked in yet

[mfuegemann]

Thank You for the information. This all sounds really great. Until now, I was not sure about the new camera feature, but as I will be able to create wall paintings from them for my safe house, I will surely use it.

[javijungle]

18 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

We have plans for Candles but they didn't make it into the update as we just had too much other stuff to complete. We might still make them in another round of updates to the system, but there are no new light sources included in the first pass of the system.

I would have liked an improvement of the interior lighting in this update, both the use of candles and the possibility to improve the effect of the exterior light (sun and moon) indoor, or even to place bulbs that can be used during an aurora. In any case, thank you very much for such a complete description and work for the community with this update.

[PilgrimReaper]

Thanks so much for all this info, and the clear communication. This looks amazing and I'm super psyched about trying it!

[Valuable Hunting Knife]

Thanks for the detailed info, and all the hard work the team are putting into what sounds like a very intensive update.  It sounds really exciting!

Just a minor question regarding work benches.  Currently there are a couple in the newer regions (such as Miner's Folly in AC, or I think one of the trailers in Blackrock) that don't have vices- will this change in the update so they can also be harvested to make a furniture bench?

edit: I'm referring to the variant as described in the TLD wiki: https://thelongdark.fandom.com/wiki/Work_Bench 

thank you

Edited November 15 by Valuable Hunting Knife
link

[Raphael van Lierop]

15 minutes ago, Valuable Hunting Knife said:

Thanks for the detailed info, and all the hard work the team are putting into what sounds like a very intensive update.  It sounds really exciting!

Just a minor question regarding work benches.  Currently there are a couple in the newer regions (such as Miner's Folly in AC, or I think one of the trailers in Blackrock) that don't have vices- will this change in the update so they can also be harvested to make a furniture bench?

edit: I'm referring to the variant as described in the TLD wiki: https://thelongdark.fandom.com/wiki/Work_Bench 

thank you

No plans to change any of the benches that don't currently have Vices on them. And keep in mind the harvesting of the Vice is not to make a Furniture Bench -- it's to make a new Workbench. The idea is to prevent the unbalancing of the game by making it possible to build endless workbenches. With this approach, there can never be more than X of them in the world at any given time, and you'll always make tradeoffs in some way (moving one here means it can't also be over there).

There is no similar restriction on Furniture Benches.

[ThePancakeLady]

🎶Pancake Pictures on my walls, A tasty way to deck the halls. Pancake pictures everywhere, And a Bear picture over there!🎶

Wait.

Wait!

That's a real live Bear!

I left the door open while I brought these all in, didn't I? 😨

 

 

[ElSuperGecko]

This all sounds amazing.  As in, REALLY amazing.

Considering the sheer number of indoor locations alone, and variety of objects that can be found in said locations... I literally can't wait to give this a try and see what players are able to come up with!

[thekillergreece]

Sounds amazing, looking forward to it. I can foresee new updates for this system.
Some of the features existed via unofficial mods so it's very nice to see such features become an official thing part of the game. 

[Nervous Pete]

This is exciting stuff! Safehouse customisation seems a lot more expansive than I initially thought. All my key wants are there - namely removing bodies and clutter and fixing up broken items and the Mountaineer's Hut roof. I never expected we'd be able to loot over the properties though! I'm glad there's a hard limit of items and I'm pretty sure it's one I'll never even remotely reach, though I'm sure some people's interiors out there will wind up looking like an exhibition hall from the Antiques Roadshow. 

I'm glad repair is intensive. I'm hoping crafting will cost a good bit of time as well for realism reasons, and to give us that feeling of pride when we've built a sturdy little chair the William Morris school would be proud of. The rustic items sound very fascinating. I've always been impressed by the assets your artists have made for this game, and am looking forward to seeing what they've designed.

The workbench system sounds very logical and balanced and I approve. 

In Safehouse Edit mode I'll probably rationalise it with spring-cleaning and simply throwing out stuff I don't want and burying it in a mound of snow. I'm hoping the UI won't be too green and glowing in the style of most base-customisation UI's and will retain a bit of that Long Dark feel, but naturally practicality will come first. I can see myself using this with a bit of a light-touch to my base editing, but am really looking forward to adding those little touches that make a place home. 

It might be good to eventually replace the 'Decoration Box' with a rough-looking bulky and knobbly canvas sack which will look more in place in the world, less gamey and yet still be one asset seemingly capable of holding any number of different things. However as you say this is early days for the Safehouse mode. I'm expecting bugs natch, as this is a complex new system with no precedent in the game, but we'll work through 'em! My only fear is the introduction of stuttering in interiors. As a Switch player (as well as primarily a PC player) I figured there'd be great limitations on the Switch, we're working with very little RAM and CPU bandwidth on that device after all, as much as I love it. 

Very much looking forward to this though! I think it'll be equal to the update introducing our clothed arms and hands into the world when it comes to really immersing the player and giving them a sense of presence in the Long Dark world. 

 

[Ansible]

8 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Repairing restores them to their "original" state, and also restores all the container slots (so a cabinet that had been missing a door and just had an empty space, now has the door and the door becomes a valid container for stuff).

Wow. This changes... EVERYTHING...

[Ansible]

Speaking of fixing things like the roofs on buildings.... realtistically, that would also affect light levels (less light inside a place that has a roof compared to one that doesn't on a full moon clear night), so that brings up the question to my mind again... have there been any thoughts in your crew @Raphael van Lierop about making "functional light levels" make sense when compared with what we can actually see with our eyes in the game?

For reference, starting at this post and going onto the next few posts, I provide a couple of examples that irritate my autistic mind because they are irrational:

Edited November 15 by Ansible

[BlueMaxW]

This sounds amazing! Will we be able to add a door to a fishing hut that didn't already have one?

[ArchimedesLP]

9 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

 

* You can repair the roof of the Mountaineer's Hut. Yay!

 

This. Means. War!

 

Just kidding Everything sounds great, can't wait to play with the new toys. Thanks for the teasers!

[Cr41g]

8 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

 

* There are over 800 items that can be moved, broken down, and in some cases, built using this system. There are over 120 interior scenes that can be turned into Safehouses, along with several specific "exterior interiors" like the Mountaineer's Hut in Timberwolf Mountain, and the Lookout Towers.

 

 

 

- Raph

one very quick question...does this mean items are limited to indoors ? So if I wanted to put a chest or container outside on the porch of say the camp office as storage would this not be possible....

[Mig_zvm]

I'm guessing there won't be any option to clear up the debris blocking the entrance to the prison in BRM or an option to build a forge somewhere in that region?  I want to believe you could turn the furnace in the underground portion of BRM into a usable furnace.

[Enigmaecho]

10 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

This thread containers spoilers about how Safehouse Customization will work when it is introduced in TALES, Part Six. Don't read this if you don't want to know how the system will work. We'll be sharing more info in the update video.

***

 

Hey all,

 

Here are some details about the upcoming Safehouse Customization feature coming in Part Six of TALEs. This isn't meant to be a super exhaustive list or FAQ, but I will try to answer questions you have in response to this information. Just post them in this thread.

 

I also want to say that we definitely have a list of improvements we'd still like to make, but we need to get this first iteration out to you, and then we'll have a better idea of how far to push some of these other improvements. Once the update goes live, we'll create a new thread here in the forums to take all your feedback on things you have encountered that are glitchy, or items you'd like to see added, or functionality you'd like to see modified. For now, the system will launch as I'm describing it below, and we think it'll be best for it to have some time "in the wild" before we make further changes to it.

 

FYI -- creating this system involved touching every single interior asset in the game, and every single interior scene, as well as creating some new UI, a lot of new items, and modifying other existing systems to be compatible with Safehouse Customization. The game wasn't built with this feature in mind, and frankly I'm surprised it works as well as it does. The team is still fixing a lot of stuff and the test team is validating everything, but with a feature this big we just know some stuff will slip through. Sorry about that in advance.

 

Here are some notes to keep in mind:

 

* There will be bugs. We are fixing them as quickly as we can, but I'm sure there will be some weird edge cases or situations we didn't encounter in testing. Please be patient, and report any issues you encounter to the Support Portal (when the update goes live).

 

* There are over 800 items that can be moved, broken down, and in some cases, built using this system. There are over 120 interior scenes that can be turned into Safehouses, along with several specific "exterior interiors" like the Mountaineer's Hut in Timberwolf Mountain, and the Lookout Towers.

 

* There are about two dozen places in the game that you cannot build Safehouses in. These include, (a) most caves, (b) the Riken, (c) some of the transitions (like the Mine section between CH and PV), etc etc. We did our best to make as many locations in the game "Safehouse-able" as possible.

 

* Around launch we'll publish a list of all the locations in the game that can be used as Safehouses, but in general it's everything apart from a couple of dozen fairly obvious places as I mentioned above.

 

* There may be locations within Safehouse-able interiors that are blocked off from Safehouse placement and editing. This applies mainly to larger interiors like Carter Dam or the Whaling Station (Hibernia) in Desolation Point. We also generally don't let you destroy or move very large metal objects or props that don't make sense, so this can impact some of your decisions about where you can place stuff.

 

* In general, you can move most existing furniture items and props around.

 

* You can remove Clutter (like shredded papers on the ground you see in some of our spaces), and you can currently repair a LIMITED number of broken cabinets, etc. Currently you can repair a lot of the kitchen cabinets that have missing doors or doors that are stuck open. Repairing restores them to their "original" state, and also restores all the container slots (so a cabinet that had been missing a door and just had an empty space, now has the door and the door becomes a valid container for stuff).

 

* You can repair the roof of the Mountaineer's Hut. Yay!

 

* Repair is a very intensive feature to implement so we've tackled some of the things we know are high-value or very much desired (hence the previous bullet about the Hut), but we probably won't be able to support repairing everything before we launch this feature. We'll continue updating it with additional Repairs in the new year.

 

* In general, you can take most decorative items (ex. wall hangings, vases, plates, etc.) and add them to your Pack. They have weight so you will want to account for that when you move them around. The Travois will probably come in handy for this. 

 

* Items that only have a Decorative value will live in a certain part of the Inventory, and won't appear in the General tab to avoid your inventory being cluttered with a bunch of random stuff that doesn't have gameplay value. 

 

* When you drop decorative items in the world, they spawn a small Decoration Box, because these items don't exist as "gear items" outside of Safehouses the way normal gear items (like food, or tools, or clothing) do, so this is the best way for us to handle dropping them outside of Safehouse-able spaces.

 

* We have added a new Furniture Workbench, and Woodworking Tools. You need these to craft new Furniture items. 

 

* We've added a range of Rustic styled items (including chairs, tables, dressers, beds, etc.) that you can construct. You can place furniture items in the location where your Furniture Workbench exists. We've also added a series of new Decorative items.

 

* Crafting Workbenches cannot be moved, but the Vice can be removed from an existing Workbench, and then used as a raw material in the construction of a new Workbench. This means you can build a Workbench in a location that is more useful to you, but only by sacrificing an existing bench, so there are still only ever going to be a certain number of Workbenches in the world. When you remove the Vice from an existing Workbench, it becomes a regular table.

 

* You can put things on the floor, the walls, on top of other items, etc. but every item has info that tells it where it can and cannot be placed. This is to avoid silliness.

 

* You can craft a Framed Photo from photos you take using the new Camera. This doesn't really have much to do with Safehouses specifically but I think it's a very cool feature so I wanted to share it. Go nuts.

 

* Corpses can be Respectfully Removed as part of general Safehouse clean-up. We opted for this solution because every other implementation exposed the possibility of doing disrespectful things with corpses and we don't want that in our game.

 

* You can still Break Down items to get resources from them when in regular gameplay. When you're in Safehouse Edit mode, you can Destroy items which goes quickly but you don't get any resources from it. This was to give you a way to clear areas quickly without making it magical or without some reasonable trade-off. If you want to harvest things for resources, don't destroy them in Edit mode.

 

* You can't destroy containers that have items in them. For example, if you want to destroy a cabinet but there are items in one of the drawers, you will have to remove the items first. Keep in mind that if you destroy an item in a Safehouse, you can't rebuild it, so please be careful what you destroy because you may not be able to get it back.

 

* This feature is very memory intensive, so it's very likely there will be a hard limit on consoles for how many items you can have inside an interior. Most PC players should be fine, but it partly depends on your spec. We're still figuring out exactly what the right limits are for console. It'll still likely be in the 100s of items per scene. The Switch will be the most restricted due to hardware limitations.

Hopefully that info clarifies some of how the Safehouse Customization feature will work.

 

- Raph

Thank you for the very detailed “just a quick overview” 😂 you mentioned larger metal objects or other impractical to move props, does that mean no moving woodstoves? Obviously not the 6burner oven but was hoping the single burner stove might fall under the “camping stove” logic and be moveable,