ChillPlayer

If you've never been camping I'd highly suggest to try it first in a more civilized settings like an official camping site with toilets, showers and maybe a small shop. There you can test drive your gear like sleeping bags, matress, cooker and so on and also how to pitch the tend and you don't need to bring food and drinks. Once you are confident with your setup and you dare stay out for a few more days in the wild, think about what you intend to eat and how you want to prepare it, where and how you get water, what animals you might expect and how to deal with them and how you want to manage the daily pooping - seriously, the later is not to be underestimated Oh and yes, if you are close to water, bring moskito spray or something. Spending a week or more away from civilization can be a highly rewarding experience but you need to know your gear and be prepared But I see you've started this thread in June, I suppose you were already camping by now, how was it?

I have only one wish: remove the smell of cooked meat. It used to be in previous versions that predators only reacted if you had raw meat on you, which is fine. But killing an animal now means that you need to stay where you are until you've eaten all the meat it provided or let it go to waste. Or at the very least, only have animals track you if the smell indicator shows at least one bar. In it's current state wolves in the vicinity will start tracking you if you only have a tiny bit of meat on you without the indicator showing anything. This would allow travel with 1-2kg of cooked meat and a full stomach, extending the exploration time by at least a day. But as said, this is the very least - I'd prefer to have the mechanic reverted back to only raw meat and limit it to the area immediately around you. Otherwise the smell mechanic can be and is heavily abused. I can pack myself full of meat/guts until 3 bars are displayed, stand on a ledge and rest/sleep for 12h - predators of half the map will come to me, ready to be turned into dinner.

When we rest we here Will/Astrid playing cards, bet that's solitaire Unfortunately we don't get to play ourselfs.

They are also the easiest maps to survive, especially on Stalker with Rifle and Revolver. You have the game since 2014 but have never been in TWM? Maybe that's the problem, I would be tremendously bored if I'd limit my experience to these maps, no matter the difficulty level. If you are looking for something in between Stalker and Interloper, try surviving on Stalker in HRV, AC, BI or TWM for a few hundred days and limit the use of guns. This will teach you how to survive without relying on loot luck, make you more comfortable with the maps and provide that extra challenge you are looking for in Stalker. Btw, a good preparation for Interloper is the Faithful Cartographer achievement done in Stalker. By doing that you will learn all maps and what you can expect from them while still having the safety of the gun and some loot worth looking for. Once you've completed this, you will be ready for Interloper and most likely come to the conclusion yourself, that luck is the least deciding factor for your success.

Yes please. We have it for Polaroids and Surveys, why not add it for Cairns and also give some implication which one we've already found? This would be very helpful, as of right now I'm not actively looking for them, just clicking on every Cairn I come across. And I'm pretty sure that some I've read a few dozen times already 😕

This would be abused heavily for bear/moose hunting, especially if one can climb any tree. Now at least you need to find a ledge which is close enough to the prey's path but unreachable for it, which already makes it easy enough.

Spectacular Lightshow ✨

I have written a very detailed guide for how to deal with wolves back in 2015 on steam. And to my surprise after quickly skimming through it, most of it is still relevant except for the actual handfight, which was changed completely. But everything else might help you to deal with our best friends https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=391000817

Have you played story mode? Mackenzie is looking for Astrid all over the place - and this is you now, and the only trail of her you can find are some Polaroids she took, scattered around Great Bear. Go find them, and find her before the wolves catch you!

Sitting around in a comfy cave once you've made it to day 100 is no challenge, true. So challenge yourself to leave the place and find all polaroids and map every region, this will be a true test of your loper skills

I was walking from Climber's Cave to the other Cave under High Medow and took note of a ravaged deer carcass which I intended to harvest the next day. But a blizzard came and the next day the carcass was gone. Few days later I returned to Climber's Cave and the carcass was there again - which is strange, because there are no wolves. 🤔

Once you make it to AC you can practically stay at Miner's Folly's forever I'm against arbitrary loot incentives and certainly against guns in Interloper. If you need the game to provide you with a reason to go to all places, set yourself the goal to find all polaroids, notes, cairns and buffer memories and survey all locations. Until you've checked all these boxes you cannot claim to have finished the game in my book. And when you've done that, you've most likely picked up all loot that is available anyway, save for respawning ressources.

Bugs can keep you occupied too. I'm still looking for the 2nd polaroid in AC for almost 80 ingame days now. I haven't found it yet but I've already hunted down two bears, have supplies all over the map and I know AC inside out now, I've even reached places where you shouldn't be able to go. As tiresome as it is, because after checking every known spawn location and every other place on the map several times I am becoming convinced that it's a bug, I still have fun. I routinely go from Miner's Folly to the Mine, down to Pillar's Footrest, to the plateau above Shattered cove and back to Miner's via High Medow or Homesteader's, pretty much in one go and all in the hopes that maybe I missed a spot. The nice thing about this route: not a single wolf, meaning I can bring enough bear meat to sustain me for the round trip and check the remaining area on the base of the valley with a full stomach and empty inventory

I think this was one of the changes to fit the style of the game better but I can't find the patch notes where they did this. But I understand the change, after all, there's nothing photo realistic in TLD and the old book design - although I personally favor it too - looked too real.

This also happens in survival mode when using the "Move all" feature. And once moved into the container, freshly boiled water is added to the container, not the players inventory.

I noticed this too but I think it is bugged, at least in survival mode. I moved all my water into a coal bin and continued to boil water. But the newly boiled water didn't end up in my inventory, it was added to the water in the coal bin. What's worse, I couldn't move the water back into my inventory from the coal bin and ultimately had to quit the game and start again from the previous save (and melt 20l of snow again ). Anyone else noticed this?

Blazing Aurora with what appears to be the great dipper over Ash Canyon:

Yes that's what I ment by the "new" spawn point above Angler's, but unfortunately there was only a pack of rifle ammo waiting for me. I don't know where to look anymore, either my game is bugged, my eyes are betraying me or it's in a location no one else had seen it before, which I find rather unlikely. But I've already double checked all the places on your recent map and am now on round 3, tripple checking everything. Btw, didn't know you are active here - I want to take the chance and say a huge thank you for the work with the map(s), they are awesome!

I found a newer map from stmSantana on Steam which shows another possible spawn point near Wolf's Jaw Overlook, after the climbing sections. Unfortunately I only found a box of rifle ammo again. So far I've checked all the locations on this map twice and found rifle/revolver ammo the first time I checked, which means I was in the right spot. Does anyone know a spawn point which is not on this map? And yes I checked the "new" spawn point over Angler's Cabin too, as well as the bugged spot over Climber's Cave:

I was already back in TWM but decided to give it one more try with the stone cache method. Went back to AC and had first to hunt some wolves for meat, then find 50 stones for the cache. Once this was done I went to the spot near the Runaway Bridge and amazingly, I could climb the hill with the stone cache. But when I reached the spot were the container with the polaroid was supposed to be, there was only a pack of rifle ammo. It's sure useful but not what I was looking for. So what does that mean for my game? I am certain that I've checked all known places listed in the wiki and on the map. The rifle ammo spawned in a place which is not reachable so it seems that the bugfix is only for new games or they just fixed the polaroid. Is this the same spot that @dissonance reached with the campfires or is there another unreachable location where the polaroid could be? These bugs are really ehm, bugging me 😕

I was curious only about one thing regarding the prisoners in EP4: I mean the place is practically dead and no one's left to "rule", seems to be quite a low hanging fruit.

Do the sidequests to get the revolver, wolves become a joke once you have it (just fire a shot into the air when you're in a wolf infested area and run through). Until then, crouch your way around them or simply run away and hide in the next building/car or on a ledge/tree. I had no issues on hardest difficulty with wolves in EP4 and only once ended in a fight despite firing several shots from the revolver, felt kinda scripted.

I deeply enjoyed EP4, it is hands down the best episode so far. Nothing feels arbitrary, the story and the "surviving" part go smoothly hand in hand and thank the wolves there were no "collect 50kg of wood" quests. I also liked the ridles like the steam pipes and getting into the Forest Talker cache very much. But I didn't like the last part where you need to escape the prison into the steam tunnels. I died more often here than in all previous chapters combined. The time to get through the smoke is really short and almost guarantees at least one death but my main issue is that there was no clue that you need to get into the small shack in the courtyard to reach the steam tunnels. I tried to get into the next section of the yard but the spotlight catched me immediately, even when it was pointing in a completely different direction and peng, dead. Sadly I had to google how to get out of there, I thought I had to escape via the main entrance (and hopefully gather my stuff I had waiting there for me) but it didn't cross my mind to try to open the door. Some "survivor" musings like "ah there is the entrance" or something would've been really helpful. But that's my only critique and EP4 shows how well TLD can work as a story with all "sandbox" gameplay naturaly interwoven. I am already looking forward to EP5, can't wait to see what hinterland will gift us next time

Thanks to EP4 I've continued my +600 days stalker run and my current challenge is to get all Polaroids of which I haven't collected a single one until recently, because they were added when I was taking a break from the game. This gives me new purpose despite the fact that I already have th FC achievement.

This was my last hope, still no 2nd polaroid. Was this fixed for previous versions too or just for new games?