Hotzn

Brief report from the Southern parts of Cologne, Germany: Toilet paper shortage, but not catastrophic. You can still get the moist & expensive toilet papers, also kitchen tissue and other stuff. No need to panic, you'll get your ass clean. Desinfectant is still available, prices are steep though at the moment. Spaghetti were short for a couple of days, but noodles weren't out. We all asked ourselves why toilet paper of all things is running out in the scenario we're in, what people will do with toilet paper, noodles & disinfectant in a potential lockdown. A satirical German online magazine has published 10 recipes for delicious dishes you can make with the named three ingredients. If you can read German, have a look, it's hilarious:

10 Recipes for noodles with toilet paper (in German)

A lot of shops are closed now, but everything you really need (supermarkets, drugstores etc.) is open. Some of the closed shops have switched to home delivery. People are calm and can move freely, but are advised to stay at home. A medical institution and telecoms providers are reported to be currently scrutinizing mobile phone data to check which portion of the population is actually following the advice (interesting, huh?).

I think people have understood here that it's not about avoiding the virus altogether, but instead slowing it down so we don't all get it at the same time. In order to allow hospitals to cope with the patients who have severe problems with it.

The economic side is a different beast. Nobody knows how much lockdown can be practiced around the world before we spin into an economic downturn which spirals out of control. That is really my concern, that all the health precautions will trigger something which goes wide and deep in a way our generation has not yet seen. Well, we'll get to know more as time passes. Take care out there. Let's hope we don't meet in a Long Dark scenario after all.

* Booming voice *

Headshot! Double Kill! Triple Kill! GODLIKE!

Thanks to all for the tips on quartering, rep earned. I'm working my way back into the game. It's been a while.

Nice. Concerning some of your questions/comments:

Foliage beds are now also found in some places in survival mode, plus you can sleep in the hay/straw in some barns. Not sure if all foliage beds from the story are also found in the sandbox.

Food poisoning risk has not changed in a while. It used to be 1% -> 4% -> 9% for every time you start eating 'bad' meat, and still is so now.

Unfortunately, I can't explain the deer OP found. But I remember wayyy back in some earlier version of the game, shortly after bears had been spread on the other maps (at first they were only in PV, then they also appeared in CH and ML), I once found a dead wolf in CH. At that point I had not yet shot, stabbed or otherwise interacted with a wolf in CH in any way which could have killed it. For a moment I thought that maybe some kind of interaction with a bear had happened, that a bear might have killed that wolf. I never found out though.

What I wanted to say is that it is really intriguing that we sometimes find things in the game which are hard to explain, isn't it? Imagine that in the stone age, legends may have sprung up from such inexplicable findings.

On 2/29/2020 at 11:39 AM, peteloud said:

This morning I was using reddit to find some data on coronavirus, whereupon I noticed their Commenting Rules

I liked the rule,

"Short comments and low effort replies are automatically removed."

This forum gets rather a lot of "Short comments and low effort replies".  I think the forum would be better without them.

 

Sorry, but I disagree. The rule you are quoting says that comments are "automatically removed" (whatever that means) if they are EITHER short OR 'low effort'. However, the mere length of a comment does neither determine how accurate nor how useful it is. Often - especially if a specific question is asked - the shortest answer is the best. If such answers are 'automatically' removed (let's say by an algorithm measuring the 'length'), the forum in question would cripple its own content. And concerning 'low effort' - that term is entirely subjective. What is 'effort' here? Who should decide that? 

Not sure in which part of these forums you experience comments which you perceive as too short or of too little effort, but the parts I am frequenting do not seem to be suffering from any of that, and I am quite content with how these forums are moderated.

Interesting questions. How about testing it out & reporting back here?

4 hours ago, qqqbbb said:

Predators (except timberwolves but they are too rare) are a joke for a survival game. They let you know when they see you, they let you know when they follow you and you can hear them as if they are next to you. It would be more fun if predators behaved like predators.

 

Doubtful. If they really behaved like predators, I presume 99% of all players would soon be killed, never seeing it coming. And then they would all complain.

Good read, as always. Please do go on.

OK, why do I look at my skills? Because there is that achievement which I am still missing, the one which requires me to raise all my skills to level 5 in a single game. With my current playstyle, the skills seem to rise somewhat evenly, so I won't really have to change anything. The only skill which concerns me is the bottom one - gunsmithing. I presume the experience I collected there is from reading one of the books, and there might be more gunsmithing books waiting for me on other maps. But at some point I will probably have to venture to BI and use the special workbench/machinery there. Which means facing at least one timberwolf pack. Well, whatever, that pack will - if I survive/defeat them - provide me with another achievement (the 'Defeat a Timberwolf Pack' one). The big question is: What to go for first? Gunsmithing & timberwolves? Or 500 days survival and mapping? Hmmm... considering that I have never been to HRV either and there is also some interesting exploring to do on other maps, I have a tendency to go mapping & accumulating survival time first. And of course there is the next achievement in line: Deep Forest (keep a campfire burning for 3 days). So, Hotzn, the plan:

Mop up DP by doing the following: Explore the cave at the broken bridge as well as the rest of the map, and map it. Punish the bear for its insolence and make a rug out of it to place in front of a chimney later. Then travel back to Crumbling Highway (hrgn? was that the name?) and make the next plan...

At some point I finally get around to forging. Or so I think. I had to repair my clothes and used up all the cloth I had available. Happily thinking that all I need is coal and scrap metal, I am informed that I am missing cloth when the forge is already up and running. Dammit. Can I spare some clothing items, harvest them? No, I am wearing top notch stuff, no way. So I leave the forge burning and go... where? To the ruined church, I recall there was another bedroll there. Plenty of cloth. I have to cross the road, and of course get into a wolf struggle doing so. When have I become such an amateur? The wolf runs off and I am down to 2/3 of my condition. Run to the Lighthouse, and lo and behold, there are some clothing items in there which I can rip apart. Back to the Riken. Nice detail: The chimney is smoking when the furnace runs:

At long last I craft the improvised hatchet & knife. Apparently that's the "full set of iprovised tools", as the achievement pops up. Yay! A look at my current skills:

I go back to the mine entrance to collect my forgotten coal and haul it back to the Riken. While I'm at it, I do a little exploring here and there. Pass a wonderful night under the sky in Katie's Corner:

When I've got enough coal & scrap metal in the Riken, I decide to explore some more around Hibernia. Find the broken bridge - never ventured this far before - and the cave near it. Don't go inside though, since I'm somewhat exhausted and not too bold. So back around Hibernia on the seaside. Where's the bear? I approach the buildings carefully. Nothing moves here. There is an overturned rowing boat near the jetty by the containers, a little up the rocks... is there something under it maybe? No. But I manage to get stuck in the terrain somehow. And then I hear a familiar huffing and puffing. Here comes the bear on the ice. I crouch, but apparently he smells me or sees me through the rocks. Makes a startled noise and runs off. Off? No, just around the rock... oh, hello...

When he has made his point, my condition is down to about 20%. Some of my equipment is scattered around, but I rather don't pick it up now. The bear has had the courtesy to free me, so I jump down onto the ice and run towards the Riken. Then patch myself up. Phew.

1 hour ago, manolitode said:

Only managed to trap its growl sort of. Put some raw rabbit on the floor, closed the hut door on the wolf's nose so he stayed outside and growled. Not only did his growling get inside the hut but inside Will's head. It stay to growl through aiming with a rock, mending and some 9 hours of sleep. Half an ingame day later, when carefully sneaking out of the hut, I realized the danger was long gone while its soundeffect had stayed. 

 

 

Loving the thought of the wolf's growl "getting into Will's/Astrid's head", but this should be reported as a bug really...

Excellent news this. Wolves following us through open doors is a great improvement and will provide exciting surprises to many players. 

2 hours ago, Jimmy said:

My general rule of thumb is to quarter bear and moose, but not wolves and deer.

The big benefit for quartering (besides moving your meat somewhere more convenient) is gaining the gut and hide in one go. Given the time cost of harvesting big game gut and hide, quartering can be faster at lower Carcass Harvesting skill levels if you're gathering these resources. It takes two hours when quartering a moose to gain twelve gut and a hide with a knife at Carcass Harvesting level 2, against two and a half hours by harvesting the regular way.

Oddly enough, both the improvised knife and improvised hatchet carry the same two hour time cost for quartering big game. Since these tools are even slower than a hunting knife, quartering with them is even more efficient to gain hide and guts from bear and moose carcasses. Especially in Interloper when minutes matter most, quartering these carcasses is the best option if you are planning to take everything.

Ah. That's a bit weird, maybe the game has not yet been straightened out in this respect. I noticed that the deer's hide and guts just appeared on the floor after quartering. This also seems convenient in terms of predator attraction - they probably don't 'travel' through the equipment and so never emanate smell. I would also presume that a bag of quartered meat does not give off as much smell as it would after harvesting the same amount of meat. But no testing done on this. I've not been playing much for quite some time.

15 hours ago, Tactical Ex said:

I've been working my way towards what I consider an optimal custom survival experience, learning from the custom game I created to get the last 2 achievements. I think there is an "end-game" but it is hard to get to.

I would describe the end-game I want to experience as a set of conditions that lead to the supplies getting rarer and rarer, the weather more harsh and tools and clothing are degrading without hopes of repair. There are all custom settings for these things and finding the balance for them is the key. 

On all of the default options (pilgrim, Voyager, Stalker, etc) I usually plateau into an easy repetitive cycle where I have so many resources that things can get a bit mundane. This is OK, I'm sure many of the players like the first 20-100 day struggle and there is nothing wrong with that but I'm trying to find the right settings for a particular experience that I can only really show with a chart. So please, offer your thoughts on how to set up a custom game to possibly have a similar difficulty curve to the one shown in blue. 

 

Please keep in mind, I have very little experience on interloper and these are all estimations from my perspective and skill level. 

As you may guess by looking at the chart, I kind of want to force the difficulty back up from the plateau I've been encountering. I'm sure hundreds or thousands of days in on the presets supplies would start to dwindle but I don't want to spend more than about 25-50 days in the easier sweet spot AND I want the difficulty to climb above its entry level on day 1.

 

Any thoughts on how you might set a custom game up like this?

Interesting thoughts here, +1. I do get the general direction, but don't quite understand what the "Difficulty" represents exactly. In other words, what happens when "Difficulty" reaches 100? I presume it becomes objectively impossible to survive, no matter how astute you are? But do you die immediately, or is it just that your resources cannot grow anymore? I would presume the latter.

Having been with the game and on these forums for quite a long time, I may relate that in earlier versions of the game, you would actually reach the 'end-game' state quite early. When only one region existed - ML - you could collect and count the number of resources easily (provided you did not get killed by wolves, which could happen just as easily). You would only have so many clothes (very few actually), you could break them down into only so many pieces of cloth, and each piece of cloth could be broken down into 2 bandages. One handfight with a wolf - if you survived it at all, you needed to be a really fast clicker - gave you one bleeding wound exactly, which required one bandage. One bullet could net you one deer. One deer gave you around 8 kg of venison, one wolf maybe 4 kg of wolf meat. You could count the calories and how long they would sustain you. No cat tails, no Birch bark, no bear, no moose, no bow, no revolver. Just you, few clothes (no clothing slots etc.), maybe a rifle, a handful of rifle rounds at most, maybe a knife, bandages, wolves and deer. The endgame had a very special feeling to it, as there was no way to survive it at all. It was just a matter of time and what you could do to prolong it. You would get more and more desperate, rip up your clothes, count your resources again and again. Every piece of scrap metal or cloth became the object of heavy decisions: Repair the hatchet to be able to collect wood faster, or the knife? Harvest the hatchet to repair the knife or vice versa? Repair your coat to fight the cold, or craft bandages? As items, regions and game mechanics were added, this endgame was completely buried, I think nobody is experiencing it anymore. You may want to look for it by trying out a really early version via the time capsule mode on Steam.

Now I would be interested to know whether custom settings can be used to re-introduce that end-game. Meaning that you would reach it at some point. Let's say after 100 days or so. I really can't say, as I have not experimented with custom settings at all so far.

In the early days of the game, there was a controversy on these forums in which direction the game should go: certain death or endless survival. Myself, I was a member of the 'certain death' party, as I felt the always-approaching end-game gave the game a sense of doom and urgency which was quite unique. But then there many people who were looking for a Mine Craft-like experience - just chilling along, accumulating items to no end, turtling in their 'base'... heck, some were even suggesting growing plants and harvesting them. In the end, one has to say that the 'Mine Craft' faction won this - a lot of sustainable resources were added, and the end-game practically disappeared. I am not saying this is for the worse, I still love the game, and the customs settings (which were also introduced after fans asked for them, big kudos to Hinterland for this) sure allow for all sorts of experiences now. So I would really like to know whether they can also bring back the really special 'end-game'. My feeling is no, I would presume you have to restrict yourself to a single map at really hard settings to get there...

9 hours ago, dahemac said:

As I get older, this is perfectly normal for me as I need to pee about every 2 hours. lol

I had to laugh at this, but at the same time would like to point out - if you don't know it already - that this might be an indication that a certain organ in your underbelly has expanded. A natural phenomenon for many males with growing age, but something that should be kept an eye on. From a certain age onwards, a man should have some things checked regularly, especially if confronted with the phenomenon you describe.

7 hours ago, ajb1978 said:

I've said in the past that a wind-up alarm clock would be great.  Like if you go to sleep, you always sleep until you are fully rested.  Unless you have an alarm clock in your inventory, at which point the game plays as it currently does.  But for all the sense it makes, you'd have people crawling out of the woodwork complaining how it ruins the game, they're never playing again, blah blah.  Happens every time some major new thing is added, before everyone quiets down and learns to deal with it.

Very true. It might be worth thinking about what the game would be like if going to sleep would mean not knowing when to awake. I remember there was a time when the game would sometimes wake you up, saying "something woke you up" (can't remember the exact wording). That was exciting and a little creepy at first, for a while I thought something new had been introduced, like someone sneaking around your shelter at night, or rats scuttling about. But there was nothing.

10 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

Personally, I think it's better that the aurora doesn't wake up the player.  I say that because if we want to take advantage of the aurora, then I think it should be a choice that the player should make, and plan for... as in sleeping in 2-3 hour increments.  I never did like the idea of the game giving us safely nets...  I'm a firm proponent of player choice.

 

Hrrm... but it's strange that your avatar can go to sleep, saying "I shall only sleep for exactly two hours, then I shall miraculously wake from my sleep to decide whether to sleep another exact one or two hours". The player choice should really only be whether to go to sleep or not, and there should be no control over when to wake up. In the end, there is no alarm clock available in this game.

And nice Summer weather.

Yeah. An epilogue, with Will kickin' it on an empty sunny beach, cocktail in hand, and Astrid splashing around in the surf in a sexy bikini. She waves to Will, comes running up the beach dripping with sea water, and throws herself down onto the towel next to him.

"Grrr", she growls and grins, "I'm a hungry Timberwolf!"

"Ahahaha", goes Will, "almost forgot about those already! Well... maybe I should get out my flare..."

* They kiss, James Bond-esque music cue plays, camera zooms out to a satellite in orbit *

* Crackling voice from the off, as if broadcasting *

"Houston, this is van Lierop. Mission accomplished. I repeat: Mission accomplished."

"Van Lierop, this is Houston, copy that. We're bringing you home."

No, en el modo mas extremo no hay armas de fuego. Se supone que hay un error en el programa que hace aparecer el revólver en una de las regiones (ne recuerdo quál era), pero no sé si el error todavía existe, y no he encontrado el revolver personalmente.

Puedes introducir armas de fuego bajo "custom settings", pero eso te lo haría imposible adquirir steam "achievements" en el juego.

Knife does more damage to the wolf than the hatchet, but the struggle takes longer, so you take more damage as well. If you fought the wolf off with the knife, you can be quite sure it will bleed out later.

I doubt that wolves do critical damage. The damage you sustain from a wolf fight depends on the duration of the fight (which you can influence by your choice of weapon and the speed of your clicking). Other factors are the protection your clothing provides and your exhaustion. So make sure if you go hand-to-hand with wolves that you wear the clothing which provides the best protection, that you are fully rested, and that your health bar is full.

I am surprised that nobody here sees the obvious references the graves' quotes make to the scriptures of Nostradamus. If you take the first letters of the relevant passages referred to and run them through the cabbalistic equinox equation, you will get the Babylonian word for what is inside Astrid's case.

Haha - at first I thought the skin-coloured object in the foreground was the object of attention, the bear carcass appeared as a boulder to me. So I was utterly mystified which kind of animal has been hunted here. I looked really hard, but couldn't make it out. Only after about two minutes did I take a closer look at the 'boulder'...