Thelek: About the Dam

Wasteland Watcher

By Wasteland Watcher
in How To Play

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Wasteland Watcher Pathfinder

Wasteland Watcher

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I love how some of you complain that the game is too easy. I actually find it almost too hard. I can survive ok in Pilgrim mode (unless i piss off a bear), but i am lucky if i make it 3 days on Voyager mode. I usually get killed by wolves before the end of day 1. Last time i tried Voyager mode, three wolves ganged up on me INSIDE the dam in the room with the safe just minutes after starting a game. I had no weapon to fight back with and they attacked me one right after the other. I died 3 seconds into the third wolf's attack. I feel that there should be a level between Pilgrim and Voyager as that Pilgrim gets boring around day 50 and Voyager is too frustating because of overly agressive wolves.

Btw, how the hell do they get inside the dam???? I have been attacked inside the dam 4 times. Once in the safe room, twice in the generator area, and once in the turbine area.

Hi Thelek,

I'm quoting you here so as not to go off topic on anyone else's post.

I feel Voyageur difficulty is well balanced. It seems like pretty realistic behavior from wolves anyhow.

It's tough but I'm on day 20 and though low currently on both water *and* medical supplies I feel like I'm getting into a routine where if I can plan right I can survive.

But the plan hinges on the combination of having enough wood for making water, sunny weather for allowing me to use the magnif.glass, and also for the weather being good enough for hunting.

I really would like to see if it's possible to live entirely off of rabbit snares and fishing at Mystery Lake.

So on to my question: If you've cleared an interior of enemies, will they respawn?

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Thelek Pathfinder

Thelek

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wow, an old post coming back to haunt me. lol. i am on day 32 of my current run in voyager. ever since i figured out how to deal with bears and wolves, the only thing that hills me now is my own stupidity. the last several attempts all ended with freezing to death for various stupid reasons. i have never suffered a shortage of matches, even on my 200+ day pilgrim runs. it is just a matter of learning good torch handling.

now to answer your question about indoor preditors. as far as i can tell at this point, the answer is no, they do not respawn. well, at least Fluffy doesnt. i dont know of any other indoor preditors at this time, although it has been stated to not get too comfortable in caves and mines. on one run, i started in the dam and found a rifle and a few rounds right away. i spent day 1 clearing and slept in the room with the back door. seems that Fluffy only roams the upper part of the dam. when i returned to the generator room on day 2, i met and killed Fluffy. as of day 17, when i foolishly let myself freeze to death once again, Fluffy had not respawned. i havent been to the dam yet on my current run.

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Wasteland Watcher Pathfinder

Wasteland Watcher

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wow, an old post coming back to haunt me. lol. i am on day 32 of my current run in voyager. ever since i figured out how to deal with bears and wolves, the only thing that hills me now is my own stupidity. the last several attempts all ended with freezing to death for various stupid reasons. i have never suffered a shortage of matches, even on my 200+ day pilgrim runs. it is just a matter of learning good torch handling.

now to answer your question about indoor preditors. as far as i can tell at this point, the answer is no, they do not respawn. well, at least Fluffy doesnt. i dont know of any other indoor preditors at this time, although it has been stated to not get too comfortable in caves and mines. on one run, i started in the dam and found a rifle and a few rounds right away. i spent day 1 clearing and slept in the room with the back door. seems that Fluffy only roams the upper part of the dam. when i returned to the generator room on day 2, i met and killed Fluffy. as of day 17, when i foolishly let myself freeze to death once again, Fluffy had not respawned. i havent been to the dam yet on my current run.

Hey hope you had a good weekend. I wasn't online at all -- just playing The Long Dark & work. I made it to day 30! Thank you for all your tips :)

About Fluffy, is she stronger than the 'average' wolf? Is "Fluffy" ever encountered outdoors?

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Thelek Pathfinder

Thelek

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wow. i would have swore i posted an answer on this thread. must have been a dream.

i do not think that Fluffy is strunger than average. once killed, she only yields 7 -9 pounds of meat which is a bit on the light side for wolves. as far as i know, Fluffy exists only in voyager and stalker modes, and only inside the upper dam. in pilgrim, there is a wolf out the back door of the dam thet chaces rabbits, but i dont think it is Fluffy.

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ThresholdSeven Pathfinder

ThresholdSeven

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There has only ever been one wolf if the dam since I started playing about 8 months ago. He, Fluffy, is always there on Stalker mode and he roams both the upper and lower floor.

If you thought you encountered 3 wolves, it was most likely Fluffy coming back at you after you had fended it off. The only other explanation is that your encounter was before I started playing when the game may have been different.

Fluffy also DOES respawn! It's hard to believe but he respawns every 1000 days. I'm on a 2500+ day Stalker run and he respawned at about day 1000 and again at 2000. The first time he respawned, I almost soiled myself because I did not expect it. (who would after 1000 days of Fluffy free dam?). He creeped up on me in the big room of the upper floor. The second time, at 2000 days, I entered the dam from below and killed him on the bottom floor.

The Long Dark has a pretty steep learning curve which turns many people off and I had just as hard a time learning and adjusting. But after playing long enough I too have joined the crowd that believes it's a little too easy. I think that Stalker mode should be much harder or at the very least and new forth mode should be introduced that is much much harder than the game is right now even on stalker. I'll never understand why compromises are made and changes are made to even stalker mode to make it easier for beginners. Why are beginners playing Stalker anyway? Why should veteran players who play stalker mode for a challenge have it nerfed to pander to new players? I'm positive that I read this as an official explanation for the change in the wolf fighting mechanic and immediately wondered why it wasn't left the way it was for stalker mode. It seems that from your subsequent post that you now do realize that the game, although it starts out really rough, that it can start to become too easy. I still find myself in situations almost every time that I play where I think I might die because I take risks to increases the suspense and fun of the gameplay, but overall I wish that a critical endgame would start at a few hundred days rather than after thousands of days, which is dictated by running out of crucial supplies with the current game mechanics.

Three changes I would make straight away in a more difficult setting would be to extremely lower the amount of supplies and (at the expense of realism) greatly increase the degradation speed of all supplies. The last change would be to get rid of any immortality techniques which can currently be done with nothing more than a few rabbit traps and a magnifying glass. With nothing else other than those supplies, one can live indefinitely and I have tested it rather extensively. It's not easy, but it's very possible.

The rabbit trap/mag glass immortality problem could be easily remedied by simply adding degradation to both items so they don't last forever. A rabbit trap will break, but it only takes one rabbit gut to fix and it can be fixed infinitely. It is my belief and the belief of other 1000+ day survivors that similar changes which I have suggested would make for a better endgame which is both more satisfying for personal play as well as competitive leaderboard play because it wouldn't take so many hours to reach endgame, which is so long that it isn't even really determined. There are enough supplies to last many thousands of days legitimately and there are only a handful of people that have lasted that long partly based on the fact that most people aren't willing to spend that much time.

I believe the reason this hasn't been payed much attention to is that this part of the player base is a very small percent, most likely much less than 1% which can be concluded from a glance at the leader board and a little math. Understandable. But that raises a question about why something isn't done to make the "endgame players" a larger portion of the player base. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that would be a good thing, but I'm pretty sure it would be because that would simple mean more people playing the game for longer hours, which can only be good.

If getting to endgame and the top of the leader board took about 10% of the time it does now (making endgame about 200-500 days in game instead of 2000-5000, I think The Long Dark would see a major increase in popularity. Right now the game is difficult to start in, but easy to last a long time. I think it should also be difficult to last more than a few hundred days, which could easily be implemented with the changes aforementioned about supplies and immortality.

I don't claim to know all the answers or have the best idea for a better endgame, but at the least I think a forth difficulty level should be implemented that takes into consideration the suggestions of long lasting veterans. That would not only leave the current game modes unchanged, but it would be testing grounds for what could be a beloved new game mode and possible a better overall game. With the changes I'm suggesting, I don't think it would be that difficult to implement. Like I said before, even though this only panders to a very small percentage of players, the point is that it could (and it should from a game developers perspective if popularity and profits are of any consideration) end up being relevant to a very large percentage of players.

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ThresholdSeven Pathfinder

ThresholdSeven

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ThresholdSeven: Fluffy should not be respawning at all, but I'll be sure to pass along your findings.

That's interesting. I also have the youtube video highlights from both times he respawned. I assumed Fluffy was supposed to respawn every 1000 days, especially after he respawned at 2000 days. These vids are from about 4-5 months ago so the bug might have been fixed already.

[bBvideo 560,340:2r6s085e]

[/bBvideo]

[bBvideo 560,340:2r6s085e]

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