JAFO

If you come across a set of Quality Tools, you can repair the hacksaw..

To be honest, after watching TheDEADP00L's latest almost-got-there run, I've concluded that despite all the luck @TheEldritchGod had on their 30 day run, they really did it the hard way.. it's possible to succeed at this challenge without the super-micro-management, and without all having the fun sucked out of the game.. Also, TEG is wrong about the value of the bow/arrows.. it's a game-changer in this challenge.. get them as soon as you can.

Ok.. it's my sad duty to inform everyone that TheDEADP00L had gotten to day 29 in terrific fashion, with around 20% condition, despite several severe screw-ups, and then, flushed with the scent of victory after insta-killing a bear with the bow, made an ill-advised charge up Bear Creek towards the cabin, in the teeth of a near blizzard, in an attempt to go to FM for another stim. He got to the ravine with less than 10% condition left, almost no water and almost no firewood. He made it as far as Deathtrap Cave before the weather deteriorated again, and death came shortly after.. it was quite painful to watch. R.I.P. TheDEADP00L #8 Moral: Don't let enthusiasm over-rule your brain.

Thanks, @TheEldritchGod... that was considerably more detail than I was expecting! From attempts I'm seeing on Twitch, I'm not certain I agree with a couple of your points, but the jury is still out on those, so we'll have to wait and see. But that's not to detract at all from your experience and your suggestions.. they're pure gold. I don't think anyone has "mastered" that.. because the only way to do it directly, is by hitting the wolf smack in the face with the torch (or handheld flare). Which is much more down to luck than skill. Miss their face by even a small amount, and they'll ignore it. A far better and more effective technique is to toss the torch (or handheld flare) so that it lands some distance ahead of the wolf. You then strafe left/right as needed to place the torch/flare directly between you and the wolf. As the wolf walks over it, it will burn their feet, and they'll run off screaming.. every single time.

Good call! The two others I'd love to see take this challenge on would be @GELtaz and @Hadrian.

Chemicalie reports getting to day 30.. "I started in twm was awesome getting by had level 5 cooking on day 8 and got the flaregun pretty late killed a bear near fishing camp and chilled there went fishing besides all that bear meat" He's now debating starting a fresh run, or shooting for 50 days.

Please do give us a more detailed write-up on how you've managed it.. tactics, techniques, tips.. others would love to know..

Gutsy move, making a summit attempt.. hopefully there's a good payoff for the risk involved! Wishing you the best of luck...

Heh.. playing that kind of whack-a-mole is a no-win game.. people will always find ways to use game mechanisms in unintended ways. Better to just plug the blatantly poor design flaws, and focus on improvements and new features.

You could give OBS a try.. or even Fraps. Edit: nevermind.. Fraps free version is limited to 30 seconds of video.

I've been thinking about this too.. a well written-up account, with screenshots, along the lines of what @Drifter Man is doing in the Survival Stories subforum here, would certainly help..

So in other words, a day with zero condition loss, and a stim to boot! That's good going indeed.. may there be many more such.

Glad you're enjoying it! Carry on...

Sometimes the last option is the only one available.. That depends if you're grimly determined to last as long as possible. I've been astonished at how long someone can survive after being knocked down to just 15% or so (days, is the answer).. and if you can find another stim before you're dead, well, you're back in the game.. "Never give up" has to become a Deadman's mantra.

In the streams, we joke that this is one mode where players usually say a short prayer before eating.. "Thank you for this food.. please don't let it kill us.." It mostly comes into its own when you're in a location where there are planks or crates to break down.. comes in handy as well if you're in the mood to not die when attacked by a wolf.

I'm not entirely sure.. @Kinnasmash? What are your thoughts?

Believe it or not, that's not too bad. It's said that Interloper is often unforgiving of mistakes.. Deadman will take your mistakes, and beat you over the head with them, until you die.

This looks fascinating! Is there a thread for it?

Interesting approach.. looking forward to seeing how that works out.. Well crap.. that sucks. Was the prybar still in the safe?

This brings up an interesting point/thought. Discussions have been had on the topic of Deadmen driving deer towards wolves, but as you've almost certainly noticed, the deer can spot you from a hell of a long way off.. almost out of bow range even, according to some. (I disagree, because... crouching) Reading what you said makes me wonder.. are the deer spotting the wolves and jinking away, before the wolves are close enough to detect them? Because if so, that means that the tactic favoured (but not yet attempted) by TheDEADP00L* may in fact be the only one viable. Which is to use yourself as bait to draw the wolves towards the deer. On the other hand, it occurs to me that, thanks to that increased detection range, you may not be able to get close enough to the deer, for the wolves to notice said deer at all.. at which point you are now the undisputed primary target of a meat-seeking wolf-missile... (unless the -presumably- carefully chosen terrain does you a favour and forces the deer back towards the wolves) * Sorry for referencing him so often.. I must sound like a fanboi.. but right now, at 7-10 days ahead of his nearest competitors, he's the closest thing we have to an expert.

I'm pretty much certain that time factors have NOT been touched.. certainly it's never been raised in any conversations with @Kinnasmash. Oh.. and good luck!

Cross-posting from Drifter Man's challenge attempt, for those who may not see it.. Sorry.. this turned into a bigger post than intended.. but better too much information, than too little... Honestly? Those aren't easy questions to answer... Let's see.. you asked "What is the main killer - cold, hunger, wolves?" Having observed quite a few attempts now, "All of the above", is what I'd say. Because they all compound on each other. But that's not very helpful.. so.. First and foremost thing I've seen so far, I think, is that you really need a hefty dose of starting luck. A good spawn location, and some essential loot items obtained early on, not surprisingly seems to make a huge difference. A hacksaw, hammer and even the can-opener are almost as essential as matches (calories are incredibly precious, -because you need SO many of them- and a can-opener makes sure you get every single one of the little buggers that you can (pun intended)). Bedroll is also a high priority, as you generally can't travel very far before needing to regain body heat, and matches are almost certainly in shorter supply than you'd like. Even if they already were, caves are your new best friend. You need a good memory. Forgetting where you left things, or forgetting items that you need to pick up and take with you, will be very costly in terms of calories that you can ill afford. DO NOT FORGET THINGS! If you have a bad memory, take copious notes, make checklists, or do whatever else it takes to mitigate it. You need rigid, iron-hard self-discipline. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard a Deadman say "I've gotta fight the urge to run just now", then 15-20 seconds later start sprinting, I'd be able to buy a new computer. Lopers are used to sprinting, to minimise exposure. It becomes a habit. Sprinting burns precious calories faster. Can you really afford to burn them willy-nilly? If you can do a cost/benefit analysis of calories burned sprinting vs potential cold-damage taken walking vs calories on hand, in your head, you're ahead of the pack (another pun!). There are no easy choices in this regard, and the wrong choice will cost you dearly. Another area where this self-discipline becomes important is when harvesting carcasses. Wolf detection ranges are off the scale.. and that applies to scent as well as eyesight. It's very important to drop every single gut and piece of meat as soon as it's harvested, before taking the next one. Keep just one of them on you as you work, and pretty much every wolf on the map will be on its way to a reception committee formed in your honour. Just ask TheDEADP00L about what happened the one time he forgot this rule. You need high situational awareness.. and I don't mean just the regular kind. Lopers are used to ignoring certain red bars, particularly the stomach one. You'll need to re-train your brain to treat any and every red bar like an alarm going off. Better yet, you need to train yourself to be aware of them getting low, before they turn red. I've lost count of how many times I've heard "Holy SHIT! When did that turn red?!?!" If you're a natural-born mountain-goat, you're ahead of the pack yet again. Shortcuts save calories, reduce exposure time, and avoid wolves. TheDEADP00L is 65% goat, and now I think on it, I suspect it's at least part of the reason why, despite (sometimes) having a memory like a sieve and the self-restraint of a 5yo*, he's way out in front of everyone else on this challenge so far. Watching him, I've learned routes that I had no idea existed or were even possible (both up and down-hill). * (and I mean that in the nicest way possible, in case you're reading this, DP!) What else? Beware of getting caught in a vortex. Certain locations (the Carter Dam is a major one, and there are almost certainly others) can suck you in, and it becomes difficult to leave, with the result that you end up burning far more calories than you should have for proportionately little gain, before you finally realise that you need to get the hell out of there, no matter the cost. In Deadman, the law of diminishing returns can bite your ass in a particularly vicious way. What do I mean, exactly? In this challenge, resources are stretched very thin, across the entire game world. Carter Dam, thanks to the unique topography and layout, can take a fair amount of time to check thoroughly, and the combination of time spent gathering meagre supplies, time (and resources) spent cooking and making water, the need for adequate rest, bad weather and wolves can mean you easily spend a couple of days or more getting/doing everything you want to before moving on. At which point you discover that you've already cleared out everything that can be eaten or burned in a considerable radius around you. Sure, there might be some burnables you can still break down, but you no longer have the calories to spare to do so. You need calories and firewood in order to leave without taking a condition hit.. and you have neither. Being stuck between a rock and a hard place never hurt quite so much... Get the flare gun and shells from the ravine. Don't argue.. just do it. Something I suspect will become important as the envelope gets pushed closer and closer to the 30 days mark, is long-term planning. Huh? 25 days counts as "long-term"? Yes, it does.. really... Those scarce resources I mentioned? Imagine, for a moment, that you're travelling across the TLD world like some kind of Dyson(TM) vacuum cleaner.. consuming all the cattails, mushrooms, rosehips and packaged food as you go.. (that ain't hard to do in this mode, believe me) Now, what happens if you need to travel back that way again (and then return?) in a week or two's time? Starvation diets are only fun when they don't kill you... So it may well become a necessary part of strategy to do your best to leave whatever you can spare, untouched.. if it later becomes critically important, for example, to reach a forge, or a supply cache, it would be nice to not have to half kill yourself getting there. But the resource margins are already razor-thin.. I wish you the best of luck getting the balance right! You asked about Deadman theory and practice. Well, that's a book that is being slowly and painfully written by those attempting the challenge. In other words, we don't know, yet, exactly what the best strategies and tactics are. Or the best timing for them. TheDEADP00L has been experimenting with trying to harvest all the deer carcasses he can.. it seems to have gotten him to 16 days, but he's beginning to question whether it is, in fact, the best long-term approach, because it definitely has downsides. It has been suggested that making snares and subsisting on rabbits may be a better approach. Lopers usually have a tendency to sneer at snares, but unless you're a crack shot with a stone every time, a snare is gonna give you less cold damage than hunting bunnies with rocks. And unlike you, snares can still catch bunnies during blizzards. The problem with rabbits, of course, is that catching, cleaning and cooking them generally burns up more calories than you get from eating them. Whether or not the combination of snares and the recently revised cooking times have tipped the equation back in the player's favour is a question to which we currently don't have an answer. Fishing has also been mooted as a key strategy. The biggest problem with fishing, of course, is that you need a LOT of firewood to make it viable. Especially when you factor in that you need extra in case the inevitable blizzard turns your fishing trip into a sleepover. Next biggest problem is obtaining/crafting enough line. I suspect (without any evidence, of course) that crafting a hatchet may also turn out to be essential to success in this regard. And now that particular subject has been raised, crafting a knife MAY be a good idea, if you can do so early enough in a run, or it might not.. we don't know yet. The only attempt in which a knife was crafted ended shortly afterwards. While you're at it, some arrow-heads may come in handy as well. But it's expensive.. you're gonna need a lot of calories and water in the process. More than you expect to, even if it is only a minimal forging session. TheDEADP00L has so far resisted every effort to persuade him that clothing repair is necessary, on the grounds of un-affordable calorie expenditure.. is he right or wrong? We don't know yet. But I do know that on day 20 the global temperatures start their decline, bottoming out around day 50. Also, as Hinterland have said, the decline is steeper (and presumably deeper?), the higher the difficulty level chosen. And Deadman difficulty is about as bad as it gets. So.. the final 10 days of this challenge are going to become.. rather challenging, I suspect. A parting thought.. like in a regular playthrough, there is probably a "hump", after which, if you can get that far, things become easier. Certainly the conversations that challengers and viewers have had on the subject assume it has to be there somewhere, just waiting to be found. The more cynical part of me suspects the "hump" exists.. around day 30.

Sorry.. this turned into a bigger post than intended.. but better too much information, than too little... Honestly? Those aren't easy questions to answer... Let's see.. you asked "What is the main killer - cold, hunger, wolves?" Having observed quite a few attempts now, "All of the above", is what I'd say. Because they all compound on each other. But that's not very helpful.. so.. First and foremost thing I've seen so far, I think, is that you really need a hefty dose of starting luck. A good spawn location, and some essential loot items obtained early on, not surprisingly seems to make a huge difference. A hacksaw, hammer and even the can-opener are almost as essential as matches (calories are incredibly precious, -because you need SO many of them- and a can-opener makes sure you get every single one of the little buggers that you can (pun intended)). Bedroll is also a high priority, as you generally can't travel very far before needing to regain body heat, and matches are almost certainly in shorter supply than you'd like. Even if they already were, caves are your new best friend. You need a good memory. Forgetting where you left things, or forgetting items that you need to pick up and take with you, will be very costly in terms of calories that you can ill afford. DO NOT FORGET THINGS! If you have a bad memory, take copious notes, make checklists, or do whatever else it takes to mitigate it. You need rigid, iron-hard self-discipline. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard a Deadman say "I've gotta fight the urge to run just now", then 15-20 seconds later start sprinting, I'd be able to buy a new computer. Lopers are used to sprinting, to minimise exposure. It becomes a habit. Sprinting burns precious calories faster. Can you really afford to burn them willy-nilly? If you can do a cost/benefit analysis of calories burned sprinting vs potential cold-damage taken walking vs calories on hand, in your head, you're ahead of the pack (another pun!). There are no easy choices in this regard, and the wrong choice will cost you dearly. Another area where this self-discipline becomes important is when harvesting carcasses. Wolf detection ranges are off the scale.. and that applies to scent as well as eyesight. It's very important to drop every single gut and piece of meat as soon as it's harvested, before taking the next one. Keep just one of them on you as you work, and pretty much every wolf on the map will be on its way to a reception committee formed in your honour. Just ask TheDEADP00L about what happened the one time he forgot this rule. You need high situational awareness.. and I don't mean just the regular kind. Lopers are used to ignoring certain red bars, particularly the stomach one. You'll need to re-train your brain to treat any and every red bar like an alarm going off. Better yet, you need to train yourself to be aware of them getting low, before they turn red. I've lost count of how many times I've heard "Holy SHIT! When did that turn red?!?!" If you're a natural-born mountain-goat, you're ahead of the pack yet again. Shortcuts save calories, reduce exposure time, and avoid wolves. TheDEADP00L is 65% goat, and now I think on it, I suspect it's at least part of the reason why, despite (sometimes) having a memory like a sieve and the self-restraint of a 5yo*, he's way out in front of everyone else on this challenge so far. Watching him, I've learned routes that I had no idea existed or were even possible (both up and down-hill). * (and I mean that in the nicest way possible, in case you're reading this, DP!) What else? Beware of getting caught in a vortex. Certain locations (the Carter Dam is a major one, and there are almost certainly others) can suck you in, and it becomes difficult to leave, with the result that you end up burning far more calories than you should have for proportionately little gain, before you finally realise that you need to get the hell out of there, no matter the cost. In Deadman, the law of diminishing returns can bite your ass in a particularly vicious way. What do I mean, exactly? In this challenge, resources are stretched very thin, across the entire game world. Carter Dam, thanks to the unique topography and layout, can take a fair amount of time to check thoroughly, and the combination of time spent gathering meagre supplies, time (and resources) spent cooking and making water, the need for adequate rest, bad weather and wolves can mean you easily spend a couple of days or more getting/doing everything you want to before moving on. At which point you discover that you've already cleared out everything that can be eaten or burned in a considerable radius around you. Sure, there might be some burnables you can still break down, but you no longer have the calories to spare to do so. You need calories and firewood in order to leave without taking a condition hit.. and you have neither. Being stuck between a rock and a hard place never hurt quite so much... Get the flare gun and shells from the ravine. Don't argue.. just do it. Something I suspect will become important as the envelope gets pushed closer and closer to the 30 days mark, is long-term planning. Huh? 25 days counts as "long-term"? Yes, it does.. really... Those scarce resources I mentioned? Imagine, for a moment, that you're travelling across the TLD world like some kind of Dyson(TM) vacuum cleaner.. consuming all the cattails, mushrooms, rosehips and packaged food as you go.. (that ain't hard to do in this mode, believe me) Now, what happens if you need to travel back that way again (and then return?) in a week or two's time? Starvation diets are only fun when they don't kill you... So it may well become a necessary part of strategy to do your best to leave whatever you can spare, untouched.. if it later becomes critically important, for example, to reach a forge, or a supply cache, it would be nice to not have to half kill yourself getting there. But the resource margins are already razor-thin.. I wish you the best of luck getting the balance right! You asked about Deadman theory and practice. Well, that's a book that is being slowly and painfully written by those attempting the challenge. In other words, we don't know, yet, exactly what the best strategies and tactics are. Or the best timing for them. TheDEADP00L has been experimenting with trying to harvest all the deer carcasses he can.. it seems to have gotten him to 16 days, but he's beginning to question whether it is, in fact, the best long-term approach, because it definitely has downsides. It has been suggested that making snares and subsisting on rabbits may be a better approach. Lopers usually have a tendency to sneer at snares, but unless you're a crack shot with a stone every time, a snare is gonna give you less cold damage than hunting bunnies with rocks. And unlike you, snares can still catch bunnies during blizzards. The problem with rabbits, of course, is that catching, cleaning and cooking them generally burns up more calories than you get from eating them. Whether or not the combination of snares and the recently revised cooking times have tipped the equation back in the player's favour is a question to which we currently don't have an answer. Fishing has also been mooted as a key strategy. The biggest problem with fishing, of course, is that you need a LOT of firewood to make it viable. Especially when you factor in that you need extra in case the inevitable blizzard turns your fishing trip into a sleepover. Next biggest problem is obtaining/crafting enough line. I suspect (without any evidence, of course) that crafting a hatchet may also turn out to be essential to success in this regard. And now that particular subject has been raised, crafting a knife MAY be a good idea, if you can do so early enough in a run, or it might not.. we don't know yet. The only attempt in which a knife was crafted ended shortly afterwards. While you're at it, some arrow-heads may come in handy as well. But it's expensive.. you're gonna need a lot of calories and water in the process. More than you expect to, even if it is only a minimal forging session. TheDEADP00L has so far resisted every effort to persuade him that clothing repair is necessary, on the grounds of un-affordable calorie expenditure.. is he right or wrong? We don't know yet. But I do know that on day 20 the global temperatures start their decline, bottoming out around day 50. Also, as Hinterland have said, the decline is steeper (and presumably deeper?), the higher the difficulty level chosen. And Deadman difficulty is about as bad as it gets. So.. the final 10 days of this challenge are going to become.. rather challenging, I suspect. A parting thought.. like in a regular playthrough, there is probably a "hump", after which, if you can get that far, things become easier. Certainly the conversations that challengers and viewers have had on the subject assume it has to be there somewhere, just waiting to be found. The more cynical part of me suspects the "hump" exists.. around day 30.

I'm mildly surprised that nobody here has mentioned the Vegan Challenge..

For a first run, you're doing quite well! Bummer about the wolf attack, though. And you're getting a good taste of the oftentimes conflicting needs (even one need conflicting with another!) and desires this challenge dishes out in spades.. Can't wait for the next instalment!