Mroz4k

Hi! Welcome to the forums! Hope you enjoy your stay! I dont think this is a bad idea at all - in fact, as k0s0ff implied, the idea of a salt is quite popular, it shows up here and then! (And that is a good thing, if past experience on forums tells me something, the things that get suggested often usually eventually make it into the game! There is soo much uses for salt past just meat preservation. And I definitely dont think it would be "irrelevant" - salted meat will last longer, at least inside, which could have its uses. Also, eating a salted meat would make one thirstier, and in a way, that has its use in itself - you can eat a piece of salted meat, get thirstier, and therefore be able to for example drink a cup of coffee. If you were on 100% thirst, you would not be able to drink it othervise. Besides, salt could be used in cooking, to perhaps cook more difficult meals, prepare things like salted jerky (which could be a piece of meat with much lower scent value), for cooking things like stews (rich quality food that spoils fast, but could be parasite-free and most importantly, could be heated up to "warm up" on a fire, and drink hot to warm up and get the warmed bonus. One of the ways to get salt would be from just finding it in a container somewhere, but you could also just boil water from Coastal highway fishing holes, which is basically seawater, for some sea salt. So I am definitedly behind this idea. I frankly believe that one of most likely changes we are going to see will be some sort of cooking-related update for sandbox, which could overhaul the current cooking mechanics and include some more variety to cooking.

Thought more and more about this idea, I am going to refer to pup as a dog, as I dont think we could get away with it being a wolf. That would mean putting a whole update´s work into a single challenge mode. Dont think thats likely. Would put a lot of work into a limited result. I understand a lot of people would not like to have a companion of any kind in TLD, for the reasons most tend to state when argumenting against NPCs - that they enjoy that feeling of being "alone" and having a companion would break it for them. (personally I think most people would enjoy it in the end, kinda like me vs ammo crafting, been always hard against it, but I quite like it in the current game, the way it was handled). However, I would not make it a "customizable" suggestion, instead having it always in the game - because as was implied by @Mr. 0 you can just decide not to save the pup. I get what you mean here, and what comes to mind is rabbit hunting with stones. I doubt it would be very popular option, but essetially, this is a game of choice, so if you decide to not help the pup, you could, in theory, put it out of its misery. Assuming you would find the pup wounded and alone, with maybe like its mother dead close, I think it would be humane thing to do. I doubt you would get anything out of it, though. Assuming that wolf meat would be renamed to "canine meat", game could get away with it being a shared meat between dogs and wolves. Maybe 1kg of meat, no pelt, one piece of guts? I still doubt most people would do this, but you are correct there should be the option. ______ In the end, I proposed a lot of changes, so I may post another post after this and just organize my ideas on imrprovements a bit to be more like yours, @Pawsitive Since it is pretty damn long post, I will put it under a spoiler. Back to pick up where I left off: This was way too long and quite frankly, its not well organized. I might make a more conscise post eventually, with marking down what my suggestions for changes would be. Overall, really loving some of the mechanics you came up with! Very original post, from what I saw of suggestions of canine companions in the past. Looking forward to discussing more on this topic!

As promised, I dived a bit more indepth into your suggestions! Here would be my notes for it: As mentioned before, I think it would be better if the pupper was a dog, rather then a wolf. First of all, it means different textures, which makes your pupper more distictive from wolves and timberwolves. Could be one of the "big" races of a doggo - German shepperd, for example, or Husky, maybe Bernardine... Could be a decent idea for a poll what would community want the most. Either one of these dog races could stand up to a wolf in their adult stage, in my opinion. Features: One per game? I dont think that would be a good idea. It is probable that at some point, you might lose your companion. I think you should be able to run across another pupper after you spend some time without one. They should be very rare, for sure. Maybe at like 50 days after losing your pup, you would have a chance to come across another. Also, I am not against an idea of having more then one. If the Husky was the chosen dog breed, you could eventually raise like 4 dogs, and could use them to sled around the place for a quite fast transportation around some regions. I like the idea that raising the doggo/wolfie would be a difficult task. Difficult tasks = good in TLD. Anything to add more late-game tasks to keep an interest in the game. Big fan of the different stages of adulthood, but I would probably rework them quite a bit. And maybe make them even more indepth - how fast would the pupper grow up would depend on how well its taken cared of. Basically feeding it and taking care of it the same way you would take care of a survivor in Ep. 3. Absolutely "yes" to training! The way you described the pupper learning commands, I would rework that. I know you wanted to make it less chaos during the adulthood of the pupper, but I think the ability of a pupper to respond to the commands should mostly come from how much effort you put into training it. In a way, you could increase its "survival skills" the same way survivor skills are handled. And training would be the way to increase its loyalty and ability to follow more and more complex commands. "Trying to protect you from harm, even from bears etc..." I like it, but I would do this part differently. Rather then having the wolfie be a super-beast, able to knife-fight a brown bear, I think the doggos should offer a help in struggle by barking at the predator, distracting it, which would make it possible for Player to actually "Struggle" during a moose or Bear attack. (I have much more to write, but dead tired - will continue once I wake up )

Socks are not important for your survival if at the end of the day, you can wear the deerskin boots. And yea, there are some items you cant ger that get ruined by a single mauling. Socks, Wool wraps especially, some of the hats, gloves... That is just life. Which is why you should maintain some spares at your base. There are loads of copies in the world, finding them, maintaining them and replace them if they get destroyed is just something you gotta do. Its not ideal - but that is survival in a nutshell. It doesnt hold your hand That said, I do believe the game woudl benefit if the player could get wool out of some animals (Bighorn-like goat that could be found in TWM, Hushed river valley) and use it to knitt some undergarments for the player which could replace things like socks, longjohns, sweaters. Would make all the clothes within the game technically "renewable" and craftable.

I dont mind either of the survivors. You can in the end just turn off the survivor comments, if the one you are playing gets annoying. But as a big Mass Effect nerd, ye... Im gonna play Will. I can never have enough of Mark Meer. (well, of course, Jennifer Hale, who is female Sheppard in Mass effect also happens to play Dr. Astrid in TLD, so I guess both options would be kinda fine... only really played male Sheppard tho) I guess this is a bit of a Story mode spoiler: In the Story mode, both characters are actually asymetrical - they have their set "strenghts" which fit in with their real world background. For "Sandbox Survival" that is never going to happen. In sandbox, you are not actually "Will" or "Astrid" - you are whomever you want to be. You make your own story. Thus you always start at the same exact strenghts, with only small differentiations, those being the "feats" that you activate.

Hi! Personally, I dont want it to work this way. The whole point of having a clothing piece item ruined is hidden in not taking care of it in the first place. You need to maintain your clothing items. If one of the very rare items is about to become ruined, and you cannot afford to repair it, unequip it, or even better store it till you can repair it. Items need to be maintained and those who fail to do that are punished by having their items destroyed. This is perfectly in-tune with the Permadeath game design TLD is.

Hi. Well, k0s0ff is not wrong, and that is not the point. The game is perma-death. That alone and basically all the game has been since Alpha shows that the game is all about being non-renewable. You are supposed to run out of some materials if you are going for a long term survival... and yet you very rarely do, especially if you play conservatively. Even still, most items are actually renewable - in a sense that you can find them washed up on the coastline, and the beachcoming items respawn every few days. And these items rarely include items like meds, even ammo, or green saplings. That makes it all "renewable" just at a cost of having to gather them for the thin ice of the coastal zones. They need to be renewable so that you have access to the meds items for example after they had "run out". Cloth is one of the more common items, and its also one of the items people run out of, due to intense item repairs. Hammers and hacksaws are perfectly renewable-powered, because you can do most of the stuff in the game with these two tools, and you can repair them with simple/Quality tools, and you can repair said tools with scrap metal. And scrap metal is one of the more common beachcombing items. That shows me you dont really have an idea of how much items are there to gather in a world of Voyageur. If you lost 3 hammers cause you havent repaired them, then that is on you for not being careful, and having a way to repair the trully "broken" items is not a fix - you, being more careful about breaking items next time, is. Also, there is way more then 3 hammers in a world, you are likely to find just 3 hammers inside one of the TWM lockers on Voyageur difficulty. With all that said, I must say I am greatly against this idea. I believe the renewable plants would be a decent mod for the game once mod support is out, but I dont think it would bring that much to the game as is.

That is why, in my opinion, this suggestion solves it all. It does make "primers" a thing, but since you dont actually need to "gather" them, because there is just such a huge surplus of them at the only ammunition table in the whole game, including them in the actual crafting would just make it unnecesarily difficult, and subjective to RNG, as you could theoretically get so much gunpowder and lead plates, but then be screwed on the amount of primers due to RNG. This solves all these problems and neatly ties it into something that would be quite immersive to a perceptive player, who realizes what the boxes actually are. It does make sense that, if the Cannery has issues with wolves (and they would, we are talking about a factory which processes smelly sardines) - they should have an amptle supply of ammunition, and ammunition crafting materials. That includes primers. There could also easily be a note, that explains that their shipment of surplus primers came. And that they are still waiting for the rest of the mats.

Yea, you should not try to push it any more then through the Forums - maybe on the Reddit and steam forums as well, but not by approaching Hinterland. Being here for a long time, I can say with a certainty that the things suggested by community the most are the ones most likely to be implemented. With that said, best way to increase the chances is to keep your thread alive, or revive it from time to time to gain more opinions and feedback from other community members, increase interest in the idea to make it more popular and more requested. Some examples: Ammo crafting, Birch bark tea, rabbitskin hat, and more, Im sure. All very widely requested ideas, shared by the community here.

Yea, sorry if it seemed like I was snapping out. Not my intention - all feedback has merit. But I do believe it is important to differenciate between domesticated and wild animals. I would agree that a wolf in itself would, even if domesticated, still probably be hostile during Aurora. After all, you cant just unlearn its genes and instincts. But, for that same reason, a dog who was born into domestic environment, left or fled due to various reasons and even if abused by people, it can later be rehabilitated to live and love people again. Due to the centuries of domestication that happened prior to it being born. The aurora wolves arent brainless killing machines - they leave each other alone. I would suspect that aurora intensifies the hunter instict in animals, thus making the predators so much more eager to attack and with more fervor. If that was the case, domesticated wolf who holds no hunter instinct towards its master should in theory not be hostile. That said - if your companion suddenly turned hostile, it would bring a new dilemma - you get into a struggle with them, do you use a weapon to defend youself, and kill them this way? Or will you try to subdue them, at a huge bodily harm to yourself? It would make for a very difficult decision in a split of a second. If one could tie the dog/wolfie down, it would be feasible to have a dog who could turn hostile during aurora, even in your proximity. What I would do in that situation would be to tie the dog down very carefuly to a chain I would be confident he cant snap from. I would not make it uncomfortable, but I would definitely make it secure. And I would sleep in the top bunk just to be sure

I remember an idea long ago, to add a fox as a bit of a "mysterious animal" - it was something about it just being an artwork animation in the game. I loved that idea too. If the owl was the same, it would be incredible. To elaborate on what was meant - basically, very rarely, when you would leave indoor locations, you would have a very short animation played, of like a fox, peaking from behind a hill not far off, noticing the player, and just booking it into a little hole, way to fast for the player to react. It was basically just supposed to be there to give more depth to the game. It would be quite nice to see owls swooping around at night, scouting for little rodents. I dont neccesarily think that hunkering down is a bad thing, it comes down to each persons preferred playstyle. But, for the people who enjoy homesteading more, they should have some prompts to visit other locations too, else there is a huge risk of the game, becoming repetitive and less fun that way. So yea, I agree with you, smokers in set locations would be great. I never made such an elaborate suggestion on the Dog companion before, but I made one about a dog one in the past. If I recall it, it was basically a runaway dog of a similar ilk to a wolf (I had Husky in mind) but a dog nonetheless. With it, being hungry and distrustful/semi-hostile to the player, but if you fed it, and basically visited it often with food, maybe even treated its injuries, you would build a rapport and the doggo would accept the player as its new master. It is not unrealistical to imagine that people owned such animals on Great bear, and through misfotunate death of their master, or simply because their master was not at home and was cut-off by the Aurora incident, that a dog would eventually run off due to hunger and other needs. As such they would be mistrustful towards human, but still basically domesticated animal, and the idea of "taming" it would be more TLD realistic, in my opinion. Never considered it to be a pup, though. I love that idea. It could bring so much more activities to be done together, with the pupper needing some proper training, and the development of friendship being all the more impactful to players. Sorry to say, but that is a very dangerous assumption you made there. That the effect of Aurora has an effect of aggression on all carnivorous animals. After all, humans can be carnivors, too. (Of course, you could say that humans are sentient beings, or that based on Story mode, people were more violent during Aurora, though it seems that was more out of fear then anything else, or out of a simple fact that they were extremists, or outright criminals). We dont actually know and we cant even know if the domesticated animals react violently to Aurora, based on the currently known information.

I know that is what it used to be back when Custom was added, but that could have changed over the time. After all, there really is not that much difference you can do between playing on a Pilgrim difficulty which counts, and on creating an easy Custom mode. I am currently testing this, we will know in just a bit.

In Hushed river valley, Id say just about all the Ice caves provide a good spot for survival. I would scatter some water, firewood and matches at every entrance so that I can use them as a safehouse should the event turn real unfortunate. I do the same with outer caves, but I tend to leave more firewood in those as that is neccesary to get thru the night in them should I be forced to hunker down, and sleep without attracting predators. I think HRV is mostly about the map knowledge. There is a lot of places where you can "hang by the thread" if things go unfortunate, but you kinda need to know them and have enough mats on you to make it through. I would suggest to always try to avoid rope climbing there. As that just puts you into such a disadvantage if you run into an animal after. The upper parts of HRV can both be accessed through Ice caves, which is probably the safest way to move around, even considering the wolf that can be found inside them. The Monolith plateau can be also reached by climbing a path with rose hip climbable walls, but you will need a hatchet to clear out the bushes in the way if you want to take that route. If you know that you will be climbing, be sure to plan it in a way that you will be able to rest up your exhaustion after. There are reasons to climb the longest climb ever, which is the rope from Monolith area into the "moose overlook" area, as there is often a hidden cache there with a cooking skillbook.

Hi, and welcome to the forums! Hope you enjoy your stay! Your ideas are pretty elaborate (I appreciate that a lot! Always really nice to have a detailed suggestion as there is so much more potential to discuss, suggest improvements and changes, and overal have a fruitful discussion!) It will take me a bit to go over your idea of a pupper, yet there are some suggestions Id like to make right away: 1) More animals! Yes! But we also should discuss animals that would bring a lot to the game, in terms of resources, difficulty and overal immersion! I kind of dont think they will add a fox or an owl into the game as a huntable animal. Fox would really just be a small predator - for its meat, it would be somewhere between wolf and a rabbit in terms of caloric value, and it would be a meat of a predator - aka succeptible to parasites. The pelt would be somewhat useful - I imagine it would be used to make decent extremedy clothes - I can think of a shawl of sorts, or maybe gloves, that sort of thing. It is a small animal and not really a wise choice for big clothing items. However, one way foxes could be an animal that affects gameplay - in a way that they would be the predators to hunt down rabbits or steal rabbits from snares. AKA a fox would have a chance to spawn around rabbit carcasses after they are lying down for a while, and attempt to pick them up. As such, you could also snare foxes by putting down rabbits or meats near snares. I think in that way, fox would be a great little animal added into the game! I would certainly not mind the foxes in the game! Owls would not serve much of a point, Im afraid. They would yield very little food, would be hard to hit, and only be active during the night when basically nobody is usually hunting. I would not mind if you could find owl feathers around outside and if you could maybe spot them flying rarely, but I dont think they should be an actual huntable animal. Also, it would be a bird animal - kinda really challenging to program in with the game we already have, I think. For those reasons, I prefer owls the way they are - as an ambiance during the non-windy nights. Personally, Id love to see Mountain lion and mountain sheep added into the game - as animals that would be found in specific regions, like Timberwolf mountain and Hushed river valley - to entice players to go and hunt them! Made a post on my idea for these two animals in a different topic today. Jerky and salt - both very popular suggestions, so its quite possible they will be added in the future! I like your approach quite a lot! A "smoker" being a building that is placed around the world could force players to move about the game a bit more, or reconsider their base placement. I think I made a similar suggestion in the past, too. It could easily be a big wood undertaking, for sure, but smokers usually dont use up that much firewood, as a normal fire would - its more about being stoked from burning and just steaming. The salt idea is also quite nice - it would basically be just an issue of being able to fill bottles with saltwater from a fishing hole in ocean-based fishing holes. I hope they add a cooking-based update. It would be really nice if there were other options for food, and other tools to have, like frying pans, soup for cooking, and so on. Little tip: Store raw meat, and dont use containers outside, unless you really want to. Raw meat at 0% can still be cooked, which increases its durability to 50%, making it quite edible. And it would take a long time for the food to become spoiled outside. Unless you are over-hunting, you should be able to utilize the meat before it goes really bad. The issue with containers is that items with 0% condition in them dissapear. 3) Whale oil - I understand the idea, but I dont think it would be a very good addition for survival mode, unless it was added as a part of a Story mode first (Story mode spoiler for Episode 3: for example like the food items in the crashed airplane being there in survival mode as well). But I agree with you that another source of lantern fuel would be great! There is one that is very viable and well known to homesteaders - which is a trick to extract oils out of a birch bark. Made a suggestion about this, you can read it in this link! Additionally, one could also extract kerosene out of coal (or I read about coal oils being viable too) - but those would need some distillery or a lab, perhaps something like that could also be found in some location on the island. 4) Pupper - a dream of mine and of many others, Im sure. A companion to have in the quiet apocalypse. It would be so nice... I will have to read your idea further in bigger detail, but one thing that caught my mind and what I think would be quite immersion-breaking for most players. That the pupper would be a wolf. Wolves, even from a young age, are notoriously difficult to raise and domesticate. Their genes make themselves known and they would disobey and just grow up to be wild for the most part. That said - it could be some mutt, either a stray pup of a dog who ran away during the time apocalypse came about or maybe a cross-breed between a dog and a wolf, but from what I understand about dogs and wolves, that does not really happen. For aurora - this is a tough one. If its indeed a wolf, it should definitely become hostile. Which brings a lot of issues with keeping a pupper around at home when sleeping. If it were a dog, it shouldnt be hostile, but could perhaps act cowardly, as I expect people would not like to lose their dog as it rushes off into a pack of two aurora wolves that are juiced up on EMP.

It slipped my mind that Badges cannot be obtained in Custom mode. Dammit I might just fire up a Voyager game then PEdit: Are we sure badges progress doesnt go up during custom mode? Because I started playing the game after the "straight to heart" feat was added, and I already have 12% progress on it, but I havent really played a game besides a Custom gamemode. I tailored my Voyagerish experience but it was always thru custom mode.

Its a big region. If you drafted the distance towards other radio towers as a bird flies, they will be about the same distance away from each other then to the towers in other regions.

I think you get a bit more loot as a Green survivor. That said - there is no shame in playing on a green survivor. I have been playing the game since alpha, and after taking like a half-year vacation from the game, I booted a Voyageour difficulty and died fairly fast simply because I overestimated my survival capabilities. Then I played on Green survivor in a story mode because it has saves and I quickly got accustomed to the game once again. This game has a pretty steep learning curve, and the thing that kills you more often then anything else simply simply overestimating your own capabilities. That said - if you can finish the three story modes so far on a Capable survivor, and then do a couple of challenges as well, you will be perfectly ready for your first long-term survival game in a sandbox, on either Voyageur or maybe even Stalker. In the end, the decision on what to play on comes to what you want from the game. If you enjoy the survival aspects so far, you might want to play a game on voyageuresk difficulty. If you want to challenge yourself hard, go for Interloper. If you enjoy dodging dangeour predators - its Stalker for you. If you prefer just exploration, Pilgrim is a good choice. Personally, I like survival the most, so im playing a Custom mode as sandbox which is similar to Voyageur, but a bit easier one. I only tuned up the weather to be more difficult as I like to struggle with the weather changes and it throwing wrenches into my plans for the day.

More animals would be great - but it wont be that easy in the end. Here are my takes on your suggestions: Does (female deer) - would be great. I am ALL for having graphical differences between animals. Animals looking differently but being esentially the same would be a great for immersion of the game. I dont think we need the "male" deer to be any different then female. But having I would also be glad for a "young buck" kind of graphics, basically deer with smaller, underdeveloped antlers. I would extend this change to include moose too, you could easily have a female moose trample the player if he attempted to kill her. We already have some "variation" between animals in size, but this is usually missed by players unless they have been playing the game for a while to notice the subtle changes in size. --- Mountain lions. I am all for it - because I would like to have them be very dangerous, but limited to the regions of Timberwolf mountain and Hushed river valley (and other "deep wilderness mountaineous locations" in the future). I imagine it would be somewhere between bear and a wolf in terms of damage, with maybe a higher chance to cause bleeds and clothing damage - and the main reason why they would be dangerous would be hidden in their looks, which would make them easy to mistake for a thick bush from a distance, and also that their movement would literally do almost no sound. I believe they should offer a mediocre amount of high calloric predator meat, 3 guts and 1 mountain lion pelt - which upon curing CANT be used to craft any new clothes, but can be harvested into 3 cured leather, making it extremely valuable piece of pelt, given its use in repairing high-quality clothing. Especially valuable for long-term survival, or for modes with less items and thus less leather goods that can be shredded. Another way to lure survivors to visit these mountainerous locations after they had looted them would be another animal that could be found here. Moutain sheep of some sort - which would upon killing yielded a mediocre amount of high calloric herbivore food and a pelt which could be used to craft high-quality undergarments. Both animals would be endemic to these mountainerous regions, but quite rare - making these deep wilderness regions worth a visit. --- Flint. I get where you are coming from - flint-knapping. But if that was the case, there would be no reason to forge tools to begin with, which I think would be bad for the game. For that reason only, I would not want flint and flint tools to be a part of the game. I am not against the spear for survival mode. I think it would be a nice weapon to have to drive a bear back like in Story mode. It could be forged from improvised knife and some extra scraps, or it could be milled on a machine from improvised hatchet. Those would be my two preffered methods.

I understand that the added difficulty appeals to the really experienced player, but I think adding too many of the badges would not be a good idea. If the more casual players feel like they have no chance to reach these badges, it would make them bitter. If we want the community to expand and have more players be attracted to the game, it should make it possible for them to obtain all the badges at a reasonable difficulty. For the more hardcore players, you can put a self-imposed challenge to do it at a higher difficulty. That said - I would not mind if the players could opt to play the mode in Stalker or Interloper difficulty. Didnt play Winters embrace myself, sadly. No time last year. Hoping to find some this year.

So Rick Astley was the Darkwalker. Makes sense. On the more serious note: Id rather not know, cuz I have a feeling this is not the last time we will see the Darkwalker.

I think I might spend a month at both of those locations. Its fun to switch up your routine every now and then, and my bellowed Camp office will not go anywhere. I really, really love the Hunting lodge, but it is just so inconvinient for survival... The approach arch is very long, and there is a lot of predators hanging about. If there was one at the lake of Mystery lake, I would never live anywhere else. That said - I quite like the living-off the land here and there. Mountaineers is fun to live in for a while, especially if one wants to work on their outdoor survival skills and want a reasonable location for it.

This is a small cosmetical change, that will nonetheless make ammunition crafting much more immersive. It simply changes the looks of Ammunition bench. First of all - I was never a big fan of ammo crafting, but I have to admit, I was wrong. Its pretty well done and actually makes a game better in my opinion! Now, to make it better. Right now, the biggest immersion breaker with ammo crafting is that it requires no primers. This can very easily be fixed by updating the ammunition bench with some boxes that will have a name of a primer-making company. I am all for a "Bullseye" primers box logo, and put 2-3 big boxes of it on the empty shelves of the Ammunition bench, or maybe two small boxes on the table and one big below the table. If the ammunition bench has overwhelming surplus of primers, there really is no need for it to be included in the crafting recipe. Any comments and support for this idea would be greatly appreciated.

Hi! I know roadmaps are not a reliable way to think about the game progression, and they have been discontinued ages ago, but still a lot of the things from the Roadmaps have made its way to the game. One of the goals on the Roadmaps were NPCs. I believe NPCs are making their way into the game eventually. Id say the game is building up to that point - and I for one welcome it. I think NPC interactions would add a whole new and great element to the survival in sandbox of The long dark. NPCs in sandbox is a bit of a unpopular idea by a lot of the players here. I understand the appeal of "alone against wilderness" but I dont believe it is fair to say "The long dark is about being alone against the wilderness". Yet, even in the lone world, you still see some evidence of human activity. Mysterious signal fire, for example. Campfires, backpacks, supplies scattered around. And even the unfortunate survivors who did not make it. That said... I believe they should be an optional option in Sandbox. One question I would like to ask others: Why do you (not) want NPCs in the Sandbox? Here is how I look at that same question: I believe NPCs would bring a lot of out-of-routine interactions in the Sandbox, if you could come across them during your survival. Much like unpredictable weather or misfortune of an animal attack - something that would somewhat "force" you out of your routine. This has a tremendous potential for one major issue players struggle with in Survival. And thats the feeling of repetitiveness and loss for drive to explore at some point of the game, being content to doing the same tasks over and over again to keep living day-to-day. Where unpredictable weather can put screws to your plan to go fishing for one day at most, a strike by an NPC thief "making off" with some of your valuables while you were out of your home would create a sense of urgency to track them down and recover your goods, or cutting your losses and just giving up your items. "What is more important right now?" Track the thieves who made of with one of your rifles, or process that bear you killed one zone away? You can decide. Here are some NPCs interactions how I would like to see them: 1. Stationary NPCs. These woudl be your "native" NPCs, in randomized locations with a set base, or at least a region. You could develop a relationship with them, in a sense that they would be your "neighbours" - but could have both warm and hostile disposition to you, depending on how you would treat them. Say you went to visit "Noah" who lives in BR Hunting lodge, in hopes to trade some pelts for some of his ammunition. You enter, and find out Noah is not there. Your character would make a comment he probably went out hunting. So a few hours later, you might hear gunshots. A flare might fly up... from a distress pistol. You know what that means - Noah is in trouble. You may chose to go and help him, or just leave, which may result in finding his remains in the future, or finding him pissed off because he got into trouble, and you did not help him. And after he saved himself and returned home, he found evidence of you being there but not helping. Coincidentally, you could one time be in a bind, and have to fire a distress pistol... and there could be a chance to someone comes to save you, treat your wounds and drag you into a shelter somewhere. These might sound so very complex, but it would literally be one more new mechanic developed on the side of the mechanics we already have with NPCs. 2. Roamers. NPCs you would not find in set locations, but would happen upon. Ranging from people in need to distrustful survivors, to people with a mission for you to do for some reward, to the already mentioned thieves, who robbed your location for something of value and forced you to chase em. Once again, could be done thru a use of many things in the game already - you could use smoke rising from campfires to locate other survivors, use tracks in the snow to track them, or maybe find slight adjustments to the game that would indicate their goal, or sense of direction. You might find your robbers in the end, to find out that it was just a desperate man, trying to feed his very sick daughter, who was mauled by a bear. It could be a thug, who would give you his piece of mind, resulting in a struggle not unlike our current animal struggle mechanics, in order to overpower them. You could just find the thieves corpses after the literal "karma" in a form of a brown bear who entered their camp one night, mauled a few and made the rest scatter and die elsewhere. There is a lot of ways one could add NPCs into the game in a seamless way that would enrich your survival experience, with an option to just not have any at all. And they could adjust the land just a little bit, for only a short period of time, and still offer unforgettable experience and tremendous immersion. Ask yourself - if you had the option to travel half an island to go visit a neighbour and maybe even trade with them, would you not want to, after playing for 5 hours of being alone? If you can properly immerse yourself into the game, you might just crave that bit of "human" contact in the end. I would not want to have "Jeremiah/Grey mother" experience with NPCs in sandbox, that they would be like "quest givers" of some area. I understand if people have different opinions and want something different from the game cant make everyone happy, in the end.

Had a bit more time today, and the event ends! Had to give it another shot! Going big this time! Hmmm... time to speedrun this puppy! I aim high, for the 10 pages run. Desolation point spawn. No dawdling now, looted church, mine, hibernia - got really lucky! Safe had a ragged expedition parka, which I promptly repaired to 70%. Got the best-in-slot gloves in one of the trailers, and made it to the fire by rikken. Oh, also decently quality revolver. And some gas, and lots of coal. Basically I was pretty set. Entered Rikken just to check the room with the corpse - nothing of interest. Balaclave by campfire. Got my first campfire page... This is going so well! Made it to the coal mine with 2 mins of gas left - didnt waste my Dispell fog this time! This is going great! The plan: Desolation point, Coastal, PV, Timberwolf mountain. PV again going for Radio tower. Winding river and ML - where i would instantly go Ravine. Billy-goat down the ravine, grab the bearkiller pistol, and billy-goat down the slope of Echo hill 8 to Bleak Inlet. Going straight for the campfire and out of BI. Crossing into FM, then going straight for BR. Get a campfire in BR, then going back to FM. passing thru FM to ML. Picking ML Campfire now and direct to Mountain town. After going straight for the campfire, navigating to Hushed river valley. There, the run would end. Back to the run. CHighway went well - went for the campfire, didnt go for Quenset this time as that almost killed me last time (Spoilers for the above story!). After looting a Fishing hut with a skull inside (spoopy), and campfire (ammo, coffee, was able to repair some of the clothes as I cooked all 5 cups of coffee) I went for log sort then went up the trailer path towards Connector mine. Tried to find the abandonned lookout but after shooting 3 rounds to scare the same wolf away, I could not find it in the mist. Went thru the mine, rested, topped off, got probably a 3rd stimpac (these will be super useful if I need to do a lot of climbing on TWM) and topped off on coal I burned reheating and sleeping outside. Darkwalker never even made it close to me, as I always lured him to the edges of where I took a big turn in my pathing. PV started well, too. Dropped lure, and drank a coffee while sprinting towards the birch forest campfire. Gotta be fast here if I dont want to waste dispell fog here, later. As I make it to the campfire, I sleep 1 hr to boil 1l of water in two cans. I loot the place (another revolver! Time to live out my Wild West fantasies!) I do some mending on items and prepare to move out. I take my note. I check my notes. 3 notes picked up. REST IN PIECES (you loot one note at the start of the game, then one at each campfire. Turns out, I read the CH one, but never picked it up. RIP perfect run)

Before I continue on the story, I would like to put down some review of this event! I finally got to play Halloween event for "The Long dark!" I usually miss them bcs of isues like exams, work or other engagements! This one is significantly longer, so happy to play it! I love that it is not so time-restricted like the 4DON! Now, Darkwalker is pretty, pretty damn unsettling. Being hunted by a malevolent entity, it was so surreal! But, if you use your tools a lot, it is not that difficult to avoid him! Its more about planning the route through it, not screwing up with the planning for gas, and just being able to plan your loot route well enough to make things efficient. I META* the crap out of this game, so I am overal pretty good at knowing where the best goodies are, and how to loot them fast and efficiently. As you will see later on in my walkthrough, putting down Lures a lot and often keeps a very serious distance between Darkwalker and the player. If I can suggest one thing, it would be that once Darkwalker finds and breaks the Lure glyph, he becomes pissed off, and moves faster for a short period of time. This would make it pretty suicidal to pop lures down when he is kinda close, as it would mean he breaks them and then beelines for the player. Of course, when Lure breaks, and you are in a position where it makes Darkwalker have some distance from you, its always the time to put down another Lure. Lure, Lure, Lure! The safehouse glyph is useful here and there, but you can use Lure fairly well to be able to sleep for 8 hours and regain the precious energy simply by luring the Darkwalker out of the way away. It usually is best to use it when you enter the region. I would use the dispell fog when you are in a huge region like Coastal, or better yet, huge transition region like Pleasant valley. Or, keeping it for the rainy day! Almost died once. Dont understimate the survival elements of the base game. Overall, it was so much fun! And stressful too. I think I had enough of scary for a long time. I actually stopped after reaching my two badges - in a first game I tried, and one I messed up quite a bit at the start! Now I am stopping there, gotta work tommorow... but I might still give it a try after the raid I have tommorow. Without much embelishment, one of the best gaming experiences I had this year, and the year before that! This could, no joke, be a standalone game on its own, and I believe it would be a huge hit once it becomes popularized between the YouTube famous. It is not that original, but it was so originally made, and so seamless with the actual game, while delivering an entirely different experience then the standard game!