elloco999

Those sound like some interesting mods, I like a tidy base myself :-)

But I'm also interested in the original question. What other mods are available? Is there an overview anywhere?

Hi,

I hadn't played TLD for a while and was really looking forward to continuing my last run. After loading I noticed al lot of the items I had lying around the ML Camp Office were missing. Then I noticed the red box near the door and remembered reading about the lost and found system introduced in the last update. Okay, no big deal. I'll just have to place everything I had arranged neatly around the cabin back where I wanted it.

But after having taken everything from the lost and found box I noticed I was still missing several items. At least 60% of my water supply was missing. Not that much of an issue, but not amusing either. I was also missing all my cups of coffee and tea. Now that was annoying. But then I realized I was also missing all three of my rifles (one of them fully loaded) and both bows! Of all the things to loose..!

I was so frustrated I shut the game down and went and watched some TV instead.

Is there any chance my rifles ended up in some other lost and found box? Is there any way I can get my missing items back? I'm hoping against hope my most valued items aren;t in fact lost forever...

On 2016-12-25 at 5:31 AM, cekivi said:

This post is just a simple FAQ for the forums for our new members. The same questions keep getting asked so why not start and FAQ?

Great idea @cekivi! Not just useful for new members either, learned something myself as well  

Great app @Sofox! I won't be using it on my regular games, but I am probably going to give it a try just to see how it works. If I can find the spare time I might just help with some of the coding.

+1000!

It may seem like a little thing, but it makes such a difference!

Thanks for the update! And what a great video! I watched it three times in a row just to soak up all the goodness in it

And thank you for the roadmap. It's nice to be able to see what you've already got planned for us. It will also hopefully help stem the flow of people requesting the same feature over and over again while you're already planning to add it.

As for the delay, take the time you need. As you say, you can only release story mode once and I do want it to be the best experience it can be.

Keep up the good work!

Oh and thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing us regular updates again!!!

Felling a large tree using axes and a crosscut saw:

On 12-3-2016 at 2:29 AM, Raphael van Lierop said:

So, for example, if we introduce a hacksaw and make it 2x or 4x more efficient at harvesting wood than a hatchet, then we have to limit it in other ways -- it has to be extremely rare and hard to find, it has to wear out quickly, it has to require ongoing costly maintenance (costly due to time or rarity of resources), etc. 

In other discussions we've already covered ground around the notion that "realism" is not the be all, end all, goal or vision for this game. An experience that is an engine for interesting choices around the exploration-survival continuum. So, I would encourage you all to ask yourselves -- what interesting choices could the addition of a saw for cutting wood, actually add to the game?

For me, time is something I have plenty of in TLD. It's the only thing I will never run out of. So if maintaining the saw would take a lot of time, that would not be "costly" to me.

I have been asking myself what a saw would add to the game since this topic started. The only answer I can come up with is realism. Unless the harvesting mechanism is also changed so a saw would be pretty much required to cut the wood and a axe/ hatchet to split it. And splitting would then need to be required as well.

I'm sure if you decide to add a saw for wood harvesting purposes you'll do it in a way that would add something and still keep the game balanced.

On 12-3-2016 at 2:29 AM, Raphael van Lierop said:

For example, to me, an interesting choice might be one where the player has to make a call between having hatchets in the world, OR saws, OR knives. Saws would be beneficial for wood harvesting, but have no value in defense against wildlife. Hatchets would be more balanced between the two activities. Knives would be effective at defense against wildlife but relatively useless at harvesting wood, leaving you to collect sticks and break small furniture items.

That one is easy to answer: I would want the knives! I hardly ever harvest wood anyway and the knives are way too important for harvesting meat from a carcass. Of course, for a frozen carcass, a hatchet is better, but you can always light a fire next to the carcass.

On 12-3-2016 at 5:27 AM, Patrick Carlson said:

This brought a really specific memory to mind: One summer years ago my dad had some giant madrona rounds delivered to our house to cut up for firewood that winter. Someone he knew in town had cut down the tree and wanted to get rid of the wood. Of course my brother and I were tasked with splitting it all up into fireplace-ready pieces. I learned just how useful a maul can be. When splitting wood for hours, it really is an ingenious tool. 

Lesson learned: use the right tool for the job. You would not want to split large rounds using a hatchet

19 hours ago, vancopower said:

Why to split the wood, Main reasons:

First you can not start a fire with wet wood and the dry part is inside.

Second as I mentioned you can not fit the wood in the stove, also it roles you can not build campfire if you can not stand the wood in one place.

Third you will need lots of tinder and lot's more unsuccessful tries to start a fire since the bark of the tree is more resistant to fire unless the tree has moss on it.

Finally I tried adding whole trunks to the fire if the fire is small it just goes off after 5-6 min. The fire needs to burn for a long time to reach temperature so you could put whole trunks in it even then there is a chance of putting it out if the wood is wet.

 

Hey now there is an excellent option, imagine this:

Wood saw is added in to the game. it makes harvesting wood faster but it could only produce whole trunks which can not be added in to the fire unless the correct temperature is up, Also you can not start fires with them. So yea you can collect more wood but you can't have the same quality as the split ed wood. Also you can not add whole trunks if the fire is less than 1 hour maybe

First: Well, I did say making it easier to light was one reason to split wood. But instead of splitting large logs to make them easier to light, you could use smaller sticks to get the fire going and add the logs only once you the fire is hot enough.

By the way, who says my wood is wet? Most of it has been lying in my base next to the stove for over 200 days by now...

Second: If you want to cut up a branch for firewood that you want to use in a stove, you shouldn't make it so long that it won't fit in the stove. And since the branches we can harvest are about wrist size, maybe a little thicker (okay, maybe the end of the branch is thick enough that it would need to be split), they will fit in the stove just fine without splitting if you don't make them too long.

Making a campfire with round wood is something I've done plenty of times so it must be possible. True, it may be hard to make a tee pee fire lay with round wood, but there are plenty of other fire lays you can use.

Third: You don't need lots of tinder to light any fire, you need lots of kindling and smalls. You only need enough tinder to light the kindling. Kindling is easy to find in a forest: just use very small sticks (up to pencil lead size). Even wet those will light with a good tinder bundle.

Finally: Like I said, these are branches, not trunks. The branch is about the same thickness as the commercially available firewood. You don't use these to start a fire or add them once the kindling is burning. You start with tinder and kindling. Once that's burning good, add the smalls (finger thickness), then small fuel (thumb thickness) and only when those are burning do you add larger pieces of fuel like those branches.

Splitting the branches would of course make them easier to light, especially when wet/moist/damp. And by doing so you would need less of the smaller pieces. And it would certainly be a good idea to split a few pieces for the early stages of the fire. I do this myself IRL. But once you've got a good fire going these branches are not that big that they need to be split to be added to the fire.

Of course, in TLD the fire mechanism isn't that elaborate. But does it need to be?

To be clear, in real life it can often be a good idea to split some wood to get a fire going. And if you're cutting down trees then yes you would need to split those to make them into manageable pieces of firewood. But in TLD we can only cut up the branches that have fallen from the trees and those are not that thick.

14 hours ago, SteveP said:

Play Timberwolf for a while and see how many days you can harvest wood with one hatchet before it is used up. See if you can last a week holed up in the alpine hut riding out a fierce storm. As I have already stated, creating a LARGE cache of firewood is a good thing and does not make the game magically too easy. Remember, for each threat there must be an appropriate response; for each bonus there is a corresponding new threat or risk. This is referred to as balance.

I have played TWM for a while and haven't needed my hatchet yet. As with all other maps, there are plenty of sticks lying around for all my fire needs. And no storm in TLD lasts for a week.

I agree that on TWM, especially if you start there, gathering lots of logs for firewood is problematic and you need the firewood more on TWM than any other map. But maybe that's the intention for this map?

But adding a new tool to make it easier and faster to gather logs on TWM makes it easier and faster on all maps. The thing I don't like about this is that it removes some aspect of gathering logs. Now, you have to make a decision: do I spend 1.5 hours chopping up this branch to get a few fir logs? Braving the cold and risking a weather change, making me start to freeze? Or maybe I don't need the wood that bad that I want to risk it. Or I will wait until the weather is better, or I'm in a better condition or something.

If we add a saw that allows us to gather those same fir logs in 15 min, that decision is trivial all of a sudden.

If the game is changed so there are storms that last a week then we would need more firewood, but not so much that you need a saw to get it. Well maybe you might if you're living in a lookout tower or the mountaineers hut in TWM...

59 minutes ago, vancopower said:

So you can see they are dependent on each other first saw the wood then chop it to pieces

Have you seen the size of the branches we can harvest in TLD? You don't really need to split those. The only reason to split them is if you want to burn them faster or to make them easier to light.

Of course, IRL you would harvest trees, not branches and then you would definitely need to split the wood.

2 hours ago, SteveP said:

The advantage of a sharp buck saw is that it can cut a 6' limb in about 2-5 minutes where a hatchet takes about an hour for each cut.. Haven't you noticed how long it takes to harvest wood from limbs?

And that's why I don't want it added to the game. It's already too easy to get a lot of firewood, no need to make harvesting a branch go much faster.

While I would want to use a good bow-/ bucksaw in real live, I do think gathering firewood is already too easy so a tool to make it even easier (faster) would in my mind not improve gameplay.

I've often enough sat for half an hour or longer in the snow while taking a break while snowboarding, never had a frozen ass...

What were you wearing, what was outdoor temperature and snow is not the same thing as stone floor.

I was dressed for the weather/ activity. So that would be a skiing-outfit as an outer layer and depending on how cold it is long underwear. Temperatures would have been anywhere from -10c to +5c.

And no, snow is not a stone floor. It is very cold though and will suck the heat right out of you if you are not dressed appropriately. But fine, let sitting on a concrete floor lower the feels like temperature more than a few degrees.

I've often enough sat for half an hour or longer in the snow while taking a break while snowboarding, never had a frozen ass...

Sitting down in the snow would chill you. Fine balance between resting and staying warm then. Would be best to be able to take some fir boughs as insulation, but the simple balancing gameplay would be adequate. Clothes would modify this as well for example, logically.

Yeah, sitting down outside or in a cave (or on a concrete floor like in the dam) should probably lower the 'feels like' temperature a few degrees.

Why i could see sitting added i fail to see why it should be added.

Its one of those features that have no point at all, like adding polka dancing or whistling. Feature without any practical implementation.

One reason would be because people want it to be added.

Another reason would be to enable resting without sleeping. This could be done by sitting down (anywhere, not just on a chair).

If I don't have any repairs or such to do: sleep.

Dumb question but I have to ask: sleep burns less calories than just "standing doing nothing" awake, right?

I do believe so yes, but I'm not 100% sure. I keep forgetting to check how much calories standing around doing nothing uses, but sleeping uses 60 cals / hour and that is very little.

If I need water I will obviously do that, unless I'm short on matches then I will wait for better weather so I can light my fire using the magnifying glass. If I don't need water, I'm not going to waste a match lighting a fire I don't need.

If I don't have any repairs or such to do: sleep.

Thanks for posting these steps Bill. Should help people on their way more quickly when they run into big issues.

This should be stickied if it isn't already.

that's sort of already available under the "why they left" video section on history:

http://www.history.com/shows/alone/videos

Thanks ChillPlayer

Unfortunately in Canada the U.S. link just redirects to the Canadian version of the site which hasn't been updated yet with the episode you mentioned - looking forward to seeing it.

try to configure one of the IP addresses in this list as your proxy in your browser (settings->network connections):

http://www.us-proxy.org/

This way you will access the site from the USA and should be able to watch the webclips, it's worth it. Curious that I can access them from Switzerland, I'm getting a "sorry, content not for your country" message though on the full clips.

Or do what I did, following Bethany's advise: use the hola plugin. Works like a charm for me. (Thanks again Bethany!)

Man, I really want to watch this show, but the site won't allow me to do so as I'm in Europe. If anyone has a link where I could watch it, that would be great.

You could try the Hola plugin. I mostly use it for Hulu (which is US-only), but it has worked on US and European network sites as well. It's free, so it might be worth a shot!

https://hola.org/

I still haven't had time to watch the last ep... Hopefully tonight.

In at least one of the episodes it's mentioned that they knew what kind of vegetation they would be dropped in, but not the actual location.

Not coaching on generalities but on the specifics of staying alive for safety regulations. Keeping food scraps out of your main camp is very important.

These weren't amateur survivalists...

http://www.history.ca/alone/bios/

"The people portrayed in this series are trained survival experts do not try this at home viewer discretion is advised" they tell us at least 5 times per episode (after every commercial on tv I guess, online there are no commericals). Trained survival experts should know not to cook/ eat or keep food in their camp.

On a slightly related side note: how does on try this at home, unless you live in that region that is?

Did they air episode 11 'After the rescue' on tv already? Online it's between episodes 7 and 8 and iirc somewhere in there they say there are 3 episodes left. Including episode 8, that would leave 9 and 10 to go. So indeed 2 episodes left.

My money is more and more on Lucas, heck if you can find the energy and will to build yourself a Yurt and a string instrument after being alone for more than a month in the woods you are in for the win - I really liked his two-notes-song in the last ep And the canoe he's build quite early in the show is still very useful.

That is a nice yurt he build but it also used a lot of calories he didn't really have. Same thing with the string instrument, he was still working on that at 2.?? am, burning up calories (and batteries for his headlamp, that's supposed to be only used for changing batteries on the camera's).

I get that he had to move his camp and that the instrument is a great moral boost, but if he's unable to replenish the burned up calories he's doomed.

Personally I find it very hard to try and predict a winner. All of them have good skills and have been able to cope with the loneliness. My favorite is Allen. I like his attitude very much.

I wonder what happened to the fish trap he made. They only show him checking it the first morning, finding nothing. I would assume they would show it if he ever caught something in it, so he probably didn't.

Is it the winter edition of minecraft?

Looking forward to the next episode myself. Not sure what would be worse, the constant rain they have now or the snow and ice they will face when it gets colder.

I saw that article in my own search, but I'm pretty sure in the episodes the text on the screen states you can view the full list on the history.com website. That's why I asked.

What I find a bit weird is that there is a list of banned items. If you can only take items from the list of 40 items you're allowed, than a list of banned items is rather superfluous... I mean, those items would not be on the list of allowed items, would they.

One quote from the article gives us a lot of information:

Joe also mentions that most of the men ended up with similar items as their 10 – and that a number of the men actually chose the exact same 10 items to use. He states that this is because there were many items on that list of 40 provided by History that no person in their right mind would bring along with them.

The compiled list of 19 items they did take probably contains all the items you might take from the full list

EDIT: The article details the specific items some of the contestants took. It seems they were allowed to choose their own type of each item on the allowed list. i.e. the list says they could take a knife, but the contestants could choose they specific knife they wanted to take.

I watched 4 eps. to me yeah would freak out big time but the footage/Editing just seems way to over dramatised which makes it look fake/cheap as semi reality show.

Maybe it was just the repeated footage every 5 minutes. or just the lack of seeing the guys do their stuff more not just the tiny bits of footage? Like you see one guy tapping out for losing his fire striker, seriously? at least explain or show more of his story. or just a pussy?

I particularly disliked the editing at the end of ep. 4 (the what's next part).

[spoil]They make it seem like that guy will wake up with a cougar next to his face, but that's far from the truth.[/spoil]

I mentioned that guy who tapped out over losing his ferrorod in a previous post. That did surprise me as well. He does mention that it would be next to impossible to start a friction fire in such humid conditions, but you would think he'd at least try but he just gives up. It could be there's more at play, but that's not obvious from what I've seen. Maybe I should have a look at his "why he left" video...