Pillock

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Everything posted by Pillock

  1. I sometimes like to write in the journal if I haven't got any pressing survival tasks to do. I always have the intention to record my thoughts and plans at different points in the game - I find it quite theraputic, and it seems to help organise my thoughts and keep me focused on what I should be doing next - but somehow, especially early on when I'm rushing about like a madman trying not to starve and freeze to death, I don't often feel I have enough time. The clock is still running when you're in the Journal screen! But I do sometimes dip into it instead of using the 'pass time' button (and then inevitably spend too long there and start losing thirst-condition by not paying attention).
  2. I dunno. You can adjust loot amounts in the Custom Settings, and on the lower levels I haven't found there to be too many. I've even been running out sometimes.
  3. Pillock

    More Pain!

    Then there would be no point in adding it at all. Part of the idea is that the pain/comfort meter would be completely invisible, as long as you were completely healthy. And if you did start to suffer from afflitions or condition loss, it'd utilise the audio/visual effects over the whole screen (like it currently does for spains, headaches or very low condition) to give an indication that you are feeling discomfort or pain related to that affliction or condition loss. The 'circle' or 'bar' part of the indicator wouldn't really need to appear at all, except on the Status Screen, maybe. The idea is not to add a new affliction, but rather to give a better and more immediate indication when you are suffering from one of the existing afflictions.
  4. @UpUpAway95 & @ThePancakeLady I wasn't intending to argue that the lantern isn't useful or doesn't have its place in the game. I do think, though, that the over-abundance easily available torches diminishes its value significantly - not to zero, but a lot lower than they were when burning brands were a part of the game. I think that's my point, really - burning brands (or significantly nerfed pulled torches) would bring the other survival tools, like crafted torches and lanterns, much more into the mix and give the game a better balance between them.
  5. I've had stones that I've thrown clearly miss visually, but still stun the rabbit. Maybe they're sent into shock from the fright?
  6. That would go some way towards it, yeah. But they'd also have to cap the maximum condition of torches pulled from fires (right now it's pretty easy to get them at 40-50%, which is way too high, I think). And they should also not be able to be relit once they fall below a certain condition level. That might sort it out. Even then, I'd still miss the old graphic representation of brands! Really? I honestly don't think that factors into it at all. There are over 200 pieces of cloth in the Coastal Townsite alone, in the form of curtains and towels. That's 400 bandages. (From one small area of only one map!) How many sprains are you getting? I never bother with lanterns except for inside my main base. They're heavy to carry and they don't have any other uses beyond light. Torches can be used to save matches when lighting fires, for transporting a flame from place to place without spending more matches, and for scaring off wolves as well. They're an incredibly useful survival tool in TLD's world and when we had to craft them out of materials (rare-ish, in the case of lamp oil), they were also incredibly valuable. Now that we can pull infinite reuseable torches from campfires at the tiny cost of a few extra bits of wood, their value is totally trivial. I think that's a shame. And it was a backward step for the game overall.
  7. Well. They should fix that bit, yeah. While we're at it, I've never understood what is actually happening when we 'Harvest' a burnt out torch into a stick. A torch is just a burning stick that we pulled out of a fire. So when it isn't burning any more, it is... a stick! What is this 2 minute harvesting process? Sounds reasonable. Although I do miss the aesthetic of the brand compared with the torch. I'd still like to see a distinction between the two. The main thing about brands was that you couldn't relight them, which meant you couldn't harvest loads of them at once to save up and use for mine/cave transitions (or for one-match fire lighting) - you had to craft torches for that, which felt much more satisfying and made lamp oil really valuable.
  8. This will always get my support whenever it reemerges as a suggestion. Brands were just better, in terms of game balance. The "take torch" mechanic is way overpowered, and totally obviates any need to craft torches from cloth and lamp oil. The (fairly brief) period when brands were in the game was a Golden Era!
  9. I think mine is starving. If I'm on low or zero calories and I find food... I eat it. I know I should wait until bed time to be efficient, but... I can't.
  10. Yeah, it still is, I think. It's just it weighs a heck of a lot and isn't useful for much else (if you've got a hatchet). Now we've got the revolver, it's become a lot less attractive as an anti-wolf weapon.
  11. The prisoners who made it through to Mystery Lake didn't go through the bus and the tunnel, I don't think - because the road doesn't go to Mystery Lake. I think they must have climbed over the rocks to reach the transition area below Milton Park, and we just have to accept that NPCs are able to do such things while we are not.
  12. Would they blow up if you put cooking pots in them?
  13. Are they? I've usually got more than I can possibly use at once within a few days of starting. Using cooking pots is better than not, but I wouldn't in any way describe them as "essential". Not in a life-or-death survival sense, anyway. I do generally support the idea of having more forging options, though (bearspearbearspearbearspear)
  14. I think it's just unharvested meatbags (from quartering) and unharvested carcasses that you have previously interacted with that are subject to "predation" (gradual loss of meat content). In previous versions, there was a part of the bear behaviour that had them walk up to unharvested carcasses and appear to "eat" from them. But it didn't seem to directly affect the state of the carcass when I checked. I haven't seen this for ages, so I don't know if it's still a thing they do.
  15. Ah, thanks. I did wonder as much after I posted that, actually. But not knowing anything about Mass Effect, it looked like a typing error when I first read it! I've also since figured out what the second quote meant! I'm guessing it was a word-for-word translation from Spanish or something.
  16. There's no reason that a blizzard should prevent the electrical impact of an aurora, is there? I mean, it'd stop you seeing the lights in the sky, but they'd still be there in the upper atmosphere, unaffected by the weather below, I'd have thought. If it is a bug, it doesn't seem to me to be one that necessarily needs fixing!
  17. Erm...? Double-erm...? Looking forward to the Devblog! And interesting to know that sprinting gives a small warmth bonus. Thanks, as ever, for keeping up with these Mailbags. Always a pleasure to read.
  18. I'd go for one of the two lookout towers myself. The Mystery Lake one is more homely than the Coastal Highway one, so maybe that one wins. But then again, they don't have open fires, and there's something to be said for staring into the flames to make you feel cosier during a storm. Perhaps the Mountaineer's Hut with the door open, then? Problem with that for me is I've died in or near that blasted place so many times before that I can't ever really feel comfortable there. I can't relax and enjoy the fire because I'm always thinking, "Do I have enough fuel for tonight? Do I have enough fuel for tomorrow? How long is this blizzard going to last? Am I going to run out of food before I run out of fuel? Where do I get food from without freezing to death? Where can I find more matches? Why am I even staying here, when I could just run back to Pleasant Valley and live a nice comfortable Farmhouse?"
  19. I for one am going to have to play the bloody thing again from the start before I try Episode 3, because I can't remember what happened. Unless they include some kind of story re-cap at the beginning of Ep3, I guess. However, there is a point here, I think. We're all assuming that Astrid made it through the tunnel, aren't we? But the bus crashed into the landslide that blocked the tunnel, and Astrid was there after the bus crashed. So how would she have got through the tunnel? Or did she go over or around the blockage? And if she did, why couldn't Will go that way as well? Jeremiah didn't seem to think that she came through Mystery Lake (or am I remembering that wrong?). So how did she get out of Milton? And how did the prisoners get to Mystery Lake without a rope to climb down the cliff from Milton Park? (Methuselah got down there by materialisation, due to being, as he is, a supernatural entity!)
  20. Pillock

    More Pain!

    I do wonder what they put in that drink. Imagine if you were dying of exhaustion, but drinking one can of Red Bull would make you able to Batman-walk up a hundred-foot cliff in 30 seconds, and the only side effect was a temporary mild headache! The elevator manufacturing industry would go bankrupt overnight.
  21. Antibiotics and mushrooms aren't strictly necessary for survival, as long as you never allow yourself to get food poisoning, and never allow your wounds to become infected. You can avoid food poisoning fairly easily; but you do need an infinite source of Old Man's Beard to make sure you can treat infection. Do they wash up on beaches?
  22. The bit that I don't like about this system is that the burn time does not depend on how cold the location of the fire is: it depends on how cold the location of your character is. So, if you light an outdoor fire, and go indoors while your stuff cooks, the fire won't get any extra duration bonus; but if you stay outside, the fire will last longer. To me this is utterly crazy. You get more of a bonus to the duration of the fire the colder you are (or would be if you weren't next to the fire), so it's always more efficient to build a campfire in the coldest location you can find, as long as it's sheltered from the wind. It's supposed to be an incentive to building fire outside rather than inside, but it's just so counter intuitive to me that I can't really bring myself to engage with it for that purpose. I just put my fires wherever, and monitor them for burning time - if I overestimate how much fuel to add, I'll just harvest the remaining fuel into torches and then back into sticks. This is a bit of an unnecessary faff in my view, but it's a tolerable workaround for a very imperfect mechanic.
  23. Pillock

    More Pain!

    Why, because it would break your immersion and sense of connection with the player character if s/he wasn't constantly as mad as you are? Seriously though, given that pain a measure of how you're "feeling", it might make a happiness/well-being system a little unnecessary.
  24. I have killed a bear in one shot with the revolver: standing on the deck of the Riken and firing into his rump as he walked past. He ran off towards the Lighthouse, and I found him lying dead on the road outside his cave the following day. I was rewarded with a lovely dose of parasites, which helped me regain my very low condition extra fast (because "rest as a resource" is disabled if you have parasites, so you can sleep-regain as much as you want). If you don't aim the revolver (just fire from the hip), it seems to scare wolves every time, even if they're mid-charge. If you aim it at them, it not only causes an instant charge if they haven't already, but it doesn't scare them off either, even if you hit them - you have to actually bring them down there and then before they reach you. I'd say don't aim the thing at all unless they haven't seen you yet! I think the effective range might be a lot less than the rifle's as well.