Mroz4k

I dont handle scary games too well. Its a bit better with scary movies but not all that much. I blame it on a trauma of watching Star infantry at the age of 8. Thanks, dad! Anyways, I started the event when it came out, but only played about 40 mins (Desolation point bit), determined to "try it out". But then, work came across, the epidemic and such keeps me busy and extremely tired after work... so I havent really played this amazing game mode event for the entirety of the event. Finally, 2 days before the event ends, oppurtunity to play for a couple of hours presents itself! (I cant blame it on work entirely, in my free time I also raid competitively on World of Warcraft classic, and as it just so happens, its a speedrun week. That is a good thing, cuz it actually means I dont need to play the game until the speedrun raid happens, which is tommorow, and all preparations are done) Back to the land of nightmarish Canada! So, I started out in Desolation point. Reading ahead of the time what the event is about, I decided to plan my route: Desolation point, Broken highway, coastal highway, transition mine, Pleasant Valley speedrun, Timberwolf mountain, back through Pleasant Valley to Mystery Lake, then speedrun through Forlorn Muskeg, Broken railroad. I was sure that at this point, I would die, get caught or just not find it challenging enough. Yea, what cheerful thoughts! Anyways, here I am, I spawn right before the Zone Coal mine - the one that acts like a convenient tunnel from one side to the other of the zone. I decide that I have enough time, Darkwalker aint here, and I got enough warm to get to the ruined church. I hike up there, and find my first ever can of glyphs, besides the one I got at the start. Off to a good start! Im sure these cans are very rare! Time to enter the mine. I am determined to load my pockets with coal - afterall, early on, my clothes were just better looking rags - and its constant night, it will be pretty darn cold! So, I burn a couple of twigs I collected and turned it into a bunch of torches, using accelerant I found in the church. I link the torches and come out of the other end of the tunnel. I am very, very affraid of bumping into a bear, but it seems there are no wolves, no predators around... didnt realize I had a predator grace period! Time to take advantage of it. Thought for a moment of visiting wolf-cave, but saner mind prevailed. Off to Hibernia I go! I loot it fairly quickly, but stop by the trailers as well to get some clothes. Pretty meager finds. Well, except for safe, which yeilded almost destroyed Mukluks! Im to worried with how real time movement of darkwalker works, that I didnt try to fix em, or tried to sleep at all... I figured I would have to conserve energy as much as I could, and regen it via carefully boiled coffees and energy drinks... Leaving Hibernia and timer runs out. Pretty damn cold, bad clothes didnt get better. Found some uncooked coffee, and some energy drinks. Not much worth. Well, one more can of glyphs. Next stop, Rikken ship. I think for a moment, I hear Darkwalker coming from the other end of Desolation, from where I unltimately have to go. Hmm, I think this is a good time to use Lure glyph, lure it to this end of the map as I walk around it in a wide arch, looting. I pop it down, and move towards the Rikken ship. I try map - ooh, I can see maps, no markers tho - except for... campfire? OOOH, those campfires! I chart it after Rikken. My poisonous gas says 12 mins... plenty of time, right? Found campfire. First note! Picked it up, didnt think too much about it... I guess these are collectibles, cool. I knew there were two badges, wanted to earn em both on first run, prove I am still pretty decent at this game! Reflecting back - very glad I picked it up. 8 mins... plenty of time to loot the desolation lighthouse, right? Lighthouse yielded another can, some actual clothes, but no prybars so no way to force open the real nice goodies. 4 mins for gas... ok, time to go. Actually very encumbered. Worried to stop to lighten up, but I do it. Darkwalker is after me, getting closer - broke my lure a while ago. I pop another one down. I am walking when 1 min on a gas I realize, there is no way Im making it ot the mine. Using dispell fog at the first location... not a good start... but I made it through to the mine with 8 mins left, still very encumbered, and since I had the time, I stopped by Katias and looted there. No weapon! Not what Im used to. Ouch. Another lure down, and its time to leave. This concluded my first run, then comes 12 days of responsibilities, till I could get into Darkwalker again! ------------------------------- Its 8 PM, pitch black outside and inside as well. Time to play some spooky games! Darkwalker, fight me! Logged in. Crumbling Highway. I dont like wolves here. Darkwalker stands in my way, another lure goes down. Gotta throw out cans that are used, they are pretty heavy. Lots of cans tho - thats a good thing! Coal paid off, and since this was more of a trial run, I use some lantern oil I found in a mine to light a fire quickly, and pop 8 hours of fuel on it. Loads of coal, and very encumbered, need ot lighten up. Risked sleeping for 8 hours. Darkwalker is very close, but I am fully rested again! Lure goes down, and I decide to go in an arch over the ice. It must still be grace period because its quiet, besides the Darkwalker, crunching metal in the distance. Found a firestarter on a dead guy. Not bad, another fire, 2 hours, sleep to heat up mostly. I decided not to go for the basement, it would put me close to the Darkwalker with potentially not having a way out. Time to leave. I spent some time fooling around, popped a few more hours of firewood on fire (got loads, no harm done!) to make some 8 torches, and to use the 2 pcs of cloth to fix up some of my items. Failed, what a surprise! I used safehouse glyph just in case while fixing the items. Now, with Darkwalker on my heels again, and 8 mins left or so on a gas, its time to leave the Crumbling highway, and never return! (in this lifetime). Coastal Highway... we meet again! But that story will come some other time!

Dont really wanna discuss semantics, but that is not free. I would say this: They are selling a baseline game, and they are including free new content for the players who already own the game. As in, they dont give out new content in the form of DLCs or timed subscription. They do not work for free, they give you new content for free with the base game. This I would 100% agree with. As someone who got the game for maybe 10 USD way back in Alpha, I feel like I have gotten a game I would easily pay 70 USD for right now if I did not have it and it was on Steam. I might just buy the OST on steam to support Hinterland. Or order something from their shop with souvenirs. In response to Opllis comment that the Hinterland are giving free content out. Oplli is not wrong. They are giving content out for free (in a way). The game is not for free, but the updates are. If you have at any point paid for an update, I would contant Hinterland immidiately, as they have never charged any extra money for their update of the base game. I think we should not discuss this anymore though. Or at least not on this thread - it feels that we deviated from the main topic which is jumping. _______________ I was thinking more about the jumping in The long dark. The "vault over obstacle" suggested earlier would not work in my opinion, since you often has several ways and directions from which to vault over an place. I just dont see how it would be implemented without being extremely buggy. I dont think lifting a foot and placing it a bit forward is not something I would consider a jump. Sounds like you are describing a type of vaulting. If this is what you meant by jumping, then I will go back to my original response and say that I am not against it. It does bring some utility. But, in the end, I dont believe it is worth the trouble it would take to implement it. But that is just my opinion.

That is kinda the idea. Imagine crafting/getting a backpack that can hold 70kg of gear. You can stuff 70 kg into it. Well, good luck walking... even with the moose hide and well-fed buff, that is not possible. Thus a backpack like this would really just be a container in itself. @oplli Think about it like this: even if you take off the backpack, you can carry 10kg of gear, for example (basically contents of your pockets and like a "built in" sort of storage so you could still have some minor gear you wouldnt put down if you put down your backpack...) Then you would have various backpacks. The most basic one would have 15kg. You could find 20kg one, 25kg one, 30 kg, 40kg, 50kg one, etc. So, with the 30kg one, you could at most carry 40 kg of gear. Not one stick more. If you get moosehide pack and well-fed bonus, you could carry 50kg of gear, not one bit more. Now, even if you have a huge backpack on, without moosehide and well-fed bonus, you would still be able to only wear 30kg of gear if you wanted to climb a rope. 40kg if you have both. Bigger backpack would simply give you the option to carry more then 40kg of gear, you would still be slowed down substantially, depending on your own weight.

Trust me, you and me and a lot of others as well. Most of the players love the idea of a multiplayer The Long dark, I think. Sadly, I doubt it is going to happen. The game is built to be a singleplayer in its core. Still, most of us love to discuss multiplayer possibilities so feel free to give it all you got! Lets talk technical for a bit: There are some issues within the game that prevent multiplayer. Time-skips - when doing most of the tasks within the game, time is skipped while this task is performed. This is kinda difficult to do with multiple people. ESRB - if multiplayer was there, depending on if it would be possible to "PVP" as in fight each other, it would affect the ratings, most likely. Player animations - it would be neccesary to animate everything for both male and female survivors. RNG nature of the game - weather changes, for example. Same as time-skips - depending on how would the time-skips be handled, players could in theory see different weather from each other. If you have any ideas how to solve these "issues", do share! It would be nice to have discussion on this again! As of right now, you can play against your friends, in a competition of sorts, giving each other self-imposed challenges. But in two different worlds. Perhaps, long into the future, we may see a different game from Hinterland on this theme which would include multiplayer of sorts. Finally, a bit of information you might find interesting: Some time ago, a few years (I think it was maybe year 2018?), on Twitter, Hinterland suggested they are interested in the idea of The long dark co-op. Nothing ever came up out of it, but we know it was at least on the table for a little while. But, this little thing gives me a bit of hope for the future, that there may yet one day be a co-op option for The Long dark. But, realistically, I doubt it.

I cannot upvote this post well enough! true, true and true. Especially once all the locks within the world has been broken, there is no point to keep the prybars - and using them to break open the fishing holes is a good idea. I do reccomend to keep one crowbar at 100% simply in case you have missed a lock, or for when new regions are added into the game. Before we were able to repair broken tools, some people would craft makeshift tools just to break open the ice for fishing. Truth is - the best tool to break open the ice for fishing is the heavy hammer itself. As a tool, it can be repaired with scrap metal and simple/quality tools. The tools themselves can also be repaired by using scrap metal on them. This means that for a small amount of metal, you could always use this tool to break open the ice and repair it when repairs were needed. I would still reccomend this over using normal tools and have to later go to bleak inlet to repair them on a milling machine. It was pointed out that guts are neccesary to fish. This is true. But you can get guts at no cost to weapons simply by hunting rabbits with stones. Rabbits are limited in the location every few days, though. Fish are not. I do like to do that as well. I quite enjoy filling up the gas canisters... But if I get non-canister lantern fuel, I am not very stingy about it. I use it all the time to top off storm lanterns, and if I have too much, I even use it for accelerant on fire starting. But, frankly, I never have enough. It is very cozy when you can use those 10 storm lanterns, turn them on, place them around your home and illuminate your entire shelter in the night. It is very resource consuming... but in the world without electricity, it is so nice to be in a room in house but have it properly lit up.

I see. But this game is a sandbox. It is not about "needing a hobby", it is about you, creating that hobby for yourself within the game. The game nowadays has so much content you can basically always figure out something to do for yourself. But we, players, limit ourselves to either trying to optimilize everything, or just simply doing the same things in a routine. If you want to keep enjoying the game after reaching 4000 days survived, you need to always make little challenges or tasks for yourself and fullfill them to "make the hobby" for yourself.

Not neccesarily. If we are talking about sandbox, you can play it in a number of ways. One way would be to move around constantly. The other would be to settle down in one location. It is a sandbox - there are no directions how to play it, really. That is an interesting idea. Still, I would probably agree with the rest of the people here - I dont think that keeping livestock around would be very viable, and in the end, not sure it would bring sufficient benefits to attempt it. Then again, if we were talking about sheep, their wool in itself would technically be a source of wool-based craftable under-layer garments. And, in itself, also a renewable source of cloth (as wool could be turned to the ingame version of cloth, Id say). That all said... I dont think it would be very good idea. It does not fit in very well into the game, the map, how survival works within the game... Some people made arguments that the livestock would die because you wouldnt be able to feed it... think wildlife. Deer are in the game, they are herbivores. If the livestock eventually died out, so would the deer after them. This does not happen. Deer is better accustomed to survival then livestock, however that does not mean the livestock couldnt survive if the deer could. Still, the livestock would definitely die in packs with the predator threat of the Great bear. You dont really have any locations that would be fit to keep them in, no fenced areas which would actually defend the livestock from predators... and their presence would just attract more wolves. One of my oldest ideas comes to mind. I made a suggestion on these forums a couple of times, that there should be some animals that are endemitic to certain areas. Kinda like timberwolves are right now in Bleak inlet... only these animals would be rare, and important for the long term survival. The suggestion I made was for a special kind of a sheep which would only be found on the Timberwolf mountain (and, now I guess it could also be found in the top areas of Hushed river valley as that is pretty mountaineous region) - these sheep would be a herbivore kind of an animal which would yield wool upon death, and skin which could be used to craft undergarments from animals. I think this would be a better way to introduce sheep into the game as it is more in par with what the game is nowadays. Keeping sheep and cattle is an interesting idea, but it does not fit in very well with The Long dark.

I was curious if it were possible to play 4DON via the time capsules. Not all that interested in the badges - Im completionist but if it were possible to achieve them, they would lose their value to the people that have them. However, due to real life obligations, I was never able to experience 4DON myself, to this day. And now we are getting a whole new event. It would be very cool if it were possible to play 4DON via time capsule, while the badges would remain unobtainable. I know this is not going to be very popular with the people who dont have them - but thats the point of having them available for limited time only. However, this way we would at least be able to experience the hard work that was put into that event by ourselves. We could attempt to "complete" the badges and at least feel satisfaction that, should it be open, we could have gotten the badges as well. This would be the best of the both worlds kinda deal, in my opinion.

Reading through these, I instantly remember the grim scene that I discovered back when they first added Revolver into the game and I made a new game to play with the new weapon in-game. This was in Mystery lake in the cave high above the Camp office, where the rope leads. The guy was just sitting there, with a couple of branches, and a revolver with three bullets loaded in it, the revolver still in his grasp. I instantly got creeps, as the whole scene looked like the guy was suffering hard right before dying, and just decided to end it himself. Glad that at the time, there were no cartridges for ammunition yet. If there was one found there, it would be even more intense...

I like this idea. Right now, there is no "backpack" - it is simply endless inventory. You can find backpacks around the world but those only serve as a small container. I do believe it would be very refreshing if the survivor started off with a small, limited backpack, and could find an later on even craft bigger, better backpacks. These would in turn limit the survivors mobility (the same way clothes do) but the game would be rebalanced so that the clothes itself cause less mobility issues to account for a bigger backpack. Basically giving the survivor an option to walk around in a hulking bear coat with a huge bearskin backpack on the back, but not even being able to sprint two meters. Small craftable backpacks would in turn provide various other options - some would be better for hunting for their mobility, some would have various stripes which would for example mean you can pull out your rifle faster. Just to provide some variety. But I am not sure how realistic this change would be. It would require a lot of rebuilding of the current game to fit it in. Still, would be quite nice. There is also the issue with "what happens when you drop your bag" - does all your inventory drop with the bag as well? That would make the backpacks essentially quite useful containers (but at the same time, I dont think thats a bad thing! You could have backpacks pre-packed for when you go hunting, for travels, for wood foraging, for fishing, and so on... not to mention being able to drop a backpack when it is neccesary, like when you are too encoumbered but are stalked by dangerous predators...) There is a lot of cool potential in this idea!

I am quite confused. This topic is 4 years old? Not to say the discussion is not relevant but I dont think the OP is on the forums anymore. (that said, I like the idea of the 99% wolf coats. I dont usually craft a wolf coat to begin with or even bother with grabbing the wolf skins as they basically have no real use for me in my games, but this can easily be applied to other pieces of clothing. Thanks!)

Its not that easy. There are technically two types of an item. Item with durability and without one. And there are two types of durability items according to the radial menu - the ones that "stack" into one button (Flares, for example) and ones that have their individual window (Bows, for example - if you have two, you will see two of them in a weapons radial menu). So, simply selecting an item as "quick drop" is not that simple. If it s a non-durability item, it isnt a problem. But if you want to use for example destroyed flares to mark your path, each flare would have to be assigned again and again to be able to quickdrop it. Basically, some items would be easy to assign for quick droping, some wouldnt. All in all, it is a quality of life improvement. I would prefer development went into more content but I would not mind it. This is what I would usually consider to be a good idea for a mod when modding support is out.

If anything Hinterland are kinda proud of their quality. Their content takes a while to come out, but when it does, it has been polished into perfection as I believe they test everything meticulously. I personally think it would be a huge undertaking, especially keeping in mind how proud they are of their quality. I believe the ability to vault would be a decent addition in the form of a mod once modding option is supported. I believe there were some unsupported mods for the game in the past and one of them had vaulting as an option. I never played that sort of modded game so I wouldnt know much about it. But from what I remember other forum members write about it, those mods left a lot to be desired. I dont think it would be impossible to add that sort of mechanic, but the additional work on re-building the maps to do it your way would for sure take while. Even more with all the testing they would do to ensure it was a top-quality addition.

I doubt it. The game doesnt treat ravaged carcasses as it does with the normal animals. For example, normal animal carcasses decay much faster then the ravaged ones. Though that may just be my feeling - but you would be able to harvest ravaged carcasses a lot later then you would normal ones, those only last 3 or so days at most. Since Ravaged carcasses are basically not normal carcasses, I doubt it was a carcass that spawned naturally with the wrong texture. From the looks of this carcass, the legs position would indicate a normal wolf that is, for some reason, dead. It could simply be a bug that the wolf is dead and isnt supposed to be. Could be that a bear actually killed wolf. I checked the other websites for more info, there are other reports of wolves appearing dead in the area of bears, and Hinterland hinted at wanting to have interactions between those two - we know wolves run from bears. It is not without a reason that this could be a wolf, killed by a bear. Is there a bear in that area? It is most likely just a bug, though. PS: There are many places where ravaged wolf carcasses can spawn. In caves, the ravine in the Broken railroad map, or Hushed river valley. Found some in Bleak inlet as well. Plenty of places.

They do naturally spawn in some places, though they are rare. However, the wolf carcass will say it was "ravaged" if it is naturally spawned, and it will appear to be half-eaten and would only have about a 0,5kg to 1,5 kg of meat on it. This one looks to not have been "ravaged" - if it says it is just "wolf corpse" then it was an actual wolf that died to something. This would be either a shot from you that killed it, or you went into a struggle with it, or you are correct and this wolf got killed by something. Which could or could not be a bug, but i dont think I have ever heard or seen a wolf die to a bear. They run away, but the bears dont seem to care.

Nevertheless, I would still make the ticket. What you experience may be a bug that could become more severe down the road, or at least it might help the devs fix a bug or two that othervise might not get reported. But of course, its all up to you

Please dont take it personally, it is a good thing that we have a discussion about it, its through this discussion we can talk merits and demerits of these ideas and provide that creative spark for the devs to improve the game. I respectfully disagree. It would solve some of the problems, that is true. It would, however, create a whole lot of other problems in its stead. As was discussed by others - the issues of cheesing animals, make shortcuts in the maps where they werent intended, getting into places where the player was never meant to go, which in turns creates a lot of other issues - what if those areas are not solid and your character just falls into endless void? It would also mean a significant re-shaping of the entire world. I must say I agree with @oplli. However, I am not against the idea of jumping as it is. even after vaulting. But it would need to be added cleverly to avoid the issues that would arise from it, or it would have to be added with a significant adjustment of the current game. Which is easier said then done. Couldnt agree more with this.

HVR can be quite difficult to navigate. However, I would suggest that you try to find the way yourself - knowing now that there are multiple ways to reach it. Figuring it out is part of the fun! I made a pretty descriptive post on how I navigate around Hushed river valley back in 2018 when the region came out. If you are interested, you can see it here: That said, I reccomend figuring it out - it is so much more rewarding as you will later find out! And once you know it, you cant really experience it for the first time again

I absolutely love this. It makes so much sense and is so simple and elegant. Afteral, a damaged lantern could leak fuel that means it uses up more, it could also affect how bring its light is! I love this idea! This is actualy already true for tools like hacksaw - where a low condition hacksaw has a chance to break and forever lock the cargo container from TWMountain. This could apply to a lot more items and tools - for things like crowbars, heavy hammers, hatchets, knives, and so on. What if a damaged battery with low condition would just randomly stop shining during Aurora, or it would have a chance to zzap the player because of the current inside, if he uses it during aurora? Giving the burns affliction to a hand. eeh, I wouldnt like it personally but it also makes perfect sense and would be a good addition to the game! Would certainly make the game more difficult and that is never a bad thing. Though I would also like to see a way to "store" medicine in a way it wouldnt decrease in condition, and maybe even some "medicine" survival skill which would afffect this chance of less effective medicine, or as a way to harvest the low quality medicine to create a better one! This I am a bit more sceptical about. The thing I like about cloth is that it stacks. It makes it really easy to manage in inventory. If the cloth had its own durability, it would no longer stack which would make it more tedious to manage within inventory. What if instead, there was a chance to either collect "cloth" or "torn cloth". When "torn cloth" would need to be first stitched together before it could be used for some crafts or for clothing repair. The ability to harvest cloth or fail and get a torn cloth would depend on survivors mending skill. To link it to your first idea - low condition clothes would have a high chance to be harvested into torn cloth, whereas high condition clothes would yield cloth in pristine condition, and in higher amounts. Also, torn cloth could be used to make bandages, but would only yield one bandage, which means it would not be efficient. Same issue with the cloth argument. I would not be happy if all firewoods had their own condition because your entire inventory space would be bunch of wood of various condition. That said, I do like the idea of a "burnt firewood" - which could simply just provide half the burn time normal wood would. This is also firewood you could harvest from campfire that was blown out by a wind. Needless to say, I like these ideas quite a lot! I would simplify some of them for the sake of making the game more convinient, but overal, I love the variety! I think "condition" on items should be something that affects tools, firestarting tools such as matches and firestarters, medicine and food, but not neccesarily raw materials like cloth, leather or firewood. That said - it is not a bad thing to have some better and worse version of firewood and materials.

I completely agree with @oplli on this one. It would be of little practical use for an average survivalist. Unless it would somehow affect the survivors ability to comprehend in-game changes of weather or aurora and its effects on electrical devices, and so on. I would like if it was a book that is very rare and limited to some certain spots of the map, but there would always be one. Its research would give a player some insight into how to predict weather or aurora, with a high margin of failure. However, the fact that the game is in itself a bit of a game of chance and you can with some margin of error predict weather in the presence, I dont think it would be a very liked feature. I would not be against it, but I dont think it brings that much to the game. I completely agree with you both. It would be quite nice if one could fix up the broken furniture, move it around the place and clean up all the trash that is often found inside the structures. Removing dead bodies from the inside (could be replaced with a backpack or a plastic or metal container afterwards to keep the inventory space), and so on. it would be a nice quality of life and something to strive towards once you are in a good space from the perspective of survival neccesities. I once again agree with @oplli here. My main issue is that it would remove an element of difficulty because it would allow fishing in places where there is no option for that. However, what I do like as an idea is to have more placed "in-game" fishing holes that would not be located inside fishing huts but would be out in the open. So you could break them and fish there, but if the elements changed drastically, you would lose a lot of heat or even condition if you werent careful. This could be achieved if fishing time would be set-speed like when you are "waiting" instead of resting. No matter how long you wait, the time is being skipped in the same speed. With fishing, if you select to fish for a long time, it degrades faster. All in all, i dont think that you should be able to fish everywhere, but I like the idea of fishing outside the huts in a pre-destined areas. Fully agree with you both. Although I dont think there is anything such as "useless" item within the game. I think a player should have an option to read a book as a way of "researching" the usual books with stories, and this could be used to lower down cabin fever risk as you are "doing a task" which is reading a story.

I had recently thought about this as well, in great detail. It would make the game more alive and would give a whole lot of new things to do in addition to the existing content for the sandbox. The hygiene is a great idea, but I dont think you really need to have it as a hygiene meter (players tend to dislike complicated HUDs). It could, in turn, work exactly like cabin fever, frostbite and hypothermia risk works. You would over time build up the risk of "bad hygiene" untill you got the affliction of "bad hygiene" which would not decrease your health like for example food poisoning does, but would increase a chance of infection from wounds, would make you smelly, would increase your exhaustion loss rate, and would decrease your condition recovery from sleeping (and ingame recovery if you have it enabled). In contrast, washing would decrease your exhaustion recovery rate, would increase your condition recovery from sleeping etc etc etc. Basically temporary buff that would work in contrast to bad hygiene. I will explain my ideas on this same addition, but from my perspective, and in reaction to your post! But I like your idea overall! The bath should not be portable. Instead, various houses and shelters would have it built into them as a part of their equipment. Some old houses could be reworked, some might even have the shower placed outside like Camp office, for example... if it would make sense. The houses would have their own water circuit which would consist of toilets, sinks, heaters, and the bath or shower. These circuits would be partially filled when you find them. They would basically act like reservoirs of water, which you could tap into, you could put water in or take it out. The water in them would also freeze - in order to thaw it, and even heat it up, you would have to use fireplace or fire stove that is located inside of the house. By thawing the water out, you would actually increase the temperature inside of your home (heaters are filled with water and by heating it up, you would heat up the whole shelter), you could use the sinks to take out the water (same way you can do in toilets now, but you would need to heat it up first), you could take a shower of a bath, depending on the indiviual options of the various house.) You could take a hot, or a cold shower. Cold shower would make you very cold, easily freezing if you did it in an outdoors shower, but would boost your ability to withstand the cold temperatures of the outside better (temporary buff to "feeels like" temperature by like 2°C, like the current Feat we have in the game. Not major, but noticeworthy. In turn, hot bath or shower would cure hypothermia faster, would increase your temperature and would grant a buff the improved condition recovery and exhaustion rate loss. Each use of bath or shower would waste some amount of water from the reservoir. You could always replenish it with potable water you have melted. Eventually, hot water would go cold once the fire burns out, but would retain heat for quite a while, then would remain cold for some time before freezing completely over. Basically think of the current wetness mechanic of the clothing in game. To make use of it, you woudl need to thaw it again. This would promote a more casual use of the fireplace or fire stove in your base to keep the reservoir liquid and usable. While once you leave for a while to visit a different part of the map for a few days, you would return to a cold shelter of a home base with a frozen reservoir which you would need to thaw in order to make your base more homey. Now, the "sponge cleaning" mentioned there is something I also considered. It would basically be a makeshift way to prevend bad hygiene when you are out travelling. Would make a use of a tool like "sponge" or a "rag" which you soak with potable water and use to scrub yourself. It would cure Bad hygiene risk. It would not cure bad hygiene once it struck - which is why it would have to be handled regularly before it developed. The rag could be crafted from cloth. This would add a new way to look at survival - as not only a survivor progression, but as your home-base progression as well. It would promote more usage of firewood which in turns mean you would be forced to go out and collect it more often, and from further away as your current location might not have enough to satisfy your needs. I know some people prefer more nomadic type of survival. That in itself is not overlooked. This would simply mean you would pick to stop by some small houses who have small reservoirs and can be used to quickly heat up for the cure of Bad hygiene, or you would have to include scrubbing into your traveling routine.

I am basically in favour, though I am not sure how well it would actually apply to the game. Im worried that instead of it, being an improvement in simplicity, it would become a tedious task of assigning what items to drop. Personally , I dont mind going into inventory and dropping the items manually. At least they gave us a good way to rotate items on the ground - makes it easy to form patterns out of things like twigs and burned out torches, patterns that display arrows towards things like shelter. My issue with these items and with the can marks is that you dont really see them from far away even if you set it to highest render. The game is just not built to render items from afar it seems, which is a bit of a shame. At least animals get rendered from a really far away. For short - I like the idea. Could make a use of the unused slots in "navigation" section of radial menu.

I like skis too, as an avid skiier. I am not against the idea that skis could be found as a rare tool around the world. However, using them would also require ski shoes (which are in the game too so no big deal) - unless we are talking about an all-timey skis that can be fastened to normal boots with leather stripes. If the skis were the Cross-country type, you could craft ski sticks from maple saplings to use as ski sticks which could be used for a faster movement speed across the flat areas. And would also be used to fend off wolves if they catch you while you are on skis. Skis could also be a type of tool that can be repaired on the milling machine of Bleak inlet if they were ever to get broken. Depending on the material used, this would either be by using fir firewood or scrap metal (or both!). I imagine they would be quite a fun-to-use and quite useful in quickly scaling down from up to down areas of some maps. For example, very useful for getting from the Ravine area of coastal town to reach the actual coastline. Going back up... well thats the difficult thing. Without ski lifts, your only option is to slowly go up again. However, not sure how well it would work in the actual game. I dont think the game is built for a player to travel fast. Also sounds like you could easily ski right into a path of a bear of a pack of wolves, which you could outrun on the skis... untill you reach the bottom. Then, you are kinda screwed. Also a high chance of flying off the cliffs, to a very deadly fall. So, I think there would have to be a good mechanics behind their control and you would definitely have to be able to slow down. Could even be linked to a survival skill "skiing". All-in-all, I like the idea but I am not sure its realistical, not unless the whole game gets reworked to fit it in. Or the devs suprise us with some very intricate controls. I would not mind both options, for skishoes either. As a different type of tool, something that would increase movement speed slightly but at much more consistent way. Where skis would increase your movement speed downhill or on flat terrain, they would slow you down if you climbed something up-hill. And using them would require one to actually put them on/off, much like deploying rope. I can imagine using the skis by "dropping them" from your inventory to a ground, perhaps by the use of radial menu or from inventory, and just like Stone caches have a selection menu, you would have selection to pick them up or use them.

I like the idea that you can avoid wolves entirely, and even if you do attract them, that you can lead them around without triggering a fight. The fact that they charge you when you start aiming with a stone is a bit strange, then again you can throw stones without aiming, so you can in theory hit them with stones till they run away (although that rarely ever works). Since the days of early Alpha, we players have been looking for a way to cheese wolves. I mean, think a way back - for the longest time, you would handle wolves by dropping a single piece of bait and then aiming your bow into their path. This was entirely risk free in the past because the wolf that was baited paid no attention to you, using your weapon, if you were at least a bit away. They fixed this, now the wolf charges you if you attempt this. So players found a new meta, the one you described (and frankly, i didnt know about ) but that just shows testament to how creative players can be in the way of the cheesing. I am pretty sure this will get fixed in time. And players will probably find a new way to cheese wolves. Such is the circle of life. Im quite sure it is not intentional for wolves to run away from a dropped torch - timberwolves in my experience dont act this way. They will run over a lit torch like it doesnt matter. However, they will not charge you if you are standing close to a campfire. Instead, they circle you and charge you once you come close enough. I would create a campfire and throw a bunch of torches around to expand my vision during night encounters with timberwolves, so I can take a better shot at them. I like Timberwolves so far but I dont really have that much experience with them just yet to form a valid opinion on them. I do miss the Brandishing mechanic. If there were a way to brandish torches instead of throwing them (while having a spacebar be used to throw them instead) and the brandishing in itself could scare the lone wolf or decrease the morale of a pack, that would be great. The idea with "attacking a timberwolf when its close" is a bit difficult - how would you select a weapon with which to do that? Or would that be like a generic "kick" maybe? Could be interesting but not sure how it would be implemented. There is no point to cause yourself an injury like carpal tunnel over a video game. You might get more effectiveness by clicking but frankly, as someone who is developing carpal due to my extensive use of PC, Im also soon switching over to those mechanics, and Im very glad that they are in the game. Carpal tunnel syndrome is a serious injury of your hand, most commonly caused by extensive use of PC for work or gaming. Its, like you said, "for those who cant click fast" because their motor functions in hands are limited and often very painful.

Skilling up is something that kinda comes to individual gameplay. For example, I am a annoying meta-gamer in this case. In my new game, I race across the whole world, almost entirely exclusively only looting the non-container items (they degrade faster, items in unsearched containers dont degrade until after you searched them) and most importantly, I look for skill books. Example, from the times Hushed river valley just got added into the game. I dont even fire a single rifle round until I have read every single rifle book in the whole game. I dont even read a single copy of "Guns, guns guns!" until I am sure I read every single frontier guide or until I reach lvl 3 at which point it no longer provides benefits. I play almost exclusively with "Lot of loot" option in my games so there is quite a few books in the whole world. But I am pretty sure Im the one of few that are crazy to meta-game like that. I do agree that the progression in some of the skills is not all that in tune with the rewards you get from them. Interesting idea, but I would not like it personally. For starters, the skill is "fire starting" (which is a weak argument from me, because it does actually teach you in time to extend the amount of burn time on items, especially indoor fires last longer.) But, wouldnt burning "more wood" on fire actually mean you are wasting resources? It would promote wasting firewood for a sake of improving a skill. The "resource-concious argument" in my opinion doesnt really apply here. You burn more firewood on fires out of neccesity. For cooking, for warming up, for keeping the predators at bay during a sleep in the wilderness... But, those might just be my opinions. I think the best way would be to introduce new "rewards" over the progression. And maybe in the future, we will get them. Take cooking for instance - maybe in the future, we will be able to cook new recipes with the items we have in the game due to us, progressing to lets say level 3. My favorite idea was being able to cook soups of different kinds. Stews, broths... using the meat we get from the animals and water. This would obviously require a use of a cooking pot - and would provide a food item that would spoil very quickly, but would provide an option of a food item which can be re-heated and would apply "warm core" bonus for significantly longer time then a cup of birch tea would. Additionally, broths or stews from the big game animals (bears, moose) could provide a sort of bonus like coffee does with exhaustion, only with "hunger" instead. As in 5 hour buff that would decrease the feeling of hunger. Normal meat would obviously still have its use - you can cook it without a pot, doesnt need water to be cooked, would be cooked faster. For fire-starting, I was always a big advocate of being able to forge an improvised firestriker. This would be a forge option you would get at certain level of firestarting skill, and would craft an item that could be used to create fire indoors without the use of matches, could not be used to light up torches, but could be used to create fires at a lower chance then matches would. Finally, in order to use it, you would HAVE to use tinder, it would not be optional. This would be an interesting option to create fires that would not make you rely on magnifying glass so much, but would make use of other items like lantern fuel or accelerant, or by burning books even at high level to offset the penalty it would bring. This sounds a lot like the secondary survival skills we have right now. Sharpening and firearm cleaning. I dont think this is way to go, because you would eventually reach quite riddiculous levels, or they would have to introduce some ceiling to them, while scaling down the existing skills. What if, instead of this, you could still progress at level 5, with no ceiling to how much exp you can, however there would be no improvements forward on (as you are already a master). However, not using skills over time would decrease them. To a point where you could actually lose rank 5 and its benefits because you "became too rusty". Research books could be used to "refresh" this knowledge by researching them again. This would give them another use after they were already reseached. But, you could only refresh your skills at much smaller rate - aka lets say gun, guns guns! add 100 rifle points, refreshing on that book would only refresh 10 rifle points for re-reading it again. That would be the concept at least. This means there is a constant need to re-use these skills to sharpen them. (Or, another train of thought would be that research from research books cant be lost, however you can lose what you earned through training). How quickly the survival skills degrade could be a setting to a difficulty of the game and in custom game settings. P-edit: If the skills degraded over time, reaching those high levels of skill 5 would take up significantly more effort.