MrWolf

Ah yes, I think that's what it was - just protects the inner layer (ear wraps). I remembered it incorrectly in my old(ish) age. Thanks.

I've played most of my many hours in The Long Dark in Interloper and I have never created a bear skin bedroll. I always make a wolf coat and bear coat and usually wear the bear coat on the inside to make it last longer. If I'm traveling in the wind, I'll switch them because the bear coat gives better wind protection. Once I have a bear coat and wolf coat and the other crafted clothing, I can sleep in the back of warm caves in a normal bedroll without fire, in any region (safe from the cold, at least). As usual, @jeffpeng makes some really good points. In addition, doesn't the moose satchel helps with attacks by taking a lot of the damage? I thought I remember reading that when the moose was introduced.

Thanks to everyone at Hinterland for all the hard work this year. Merry Christmas and Happy Near Year!

Did you go indoors, or somewhere with a loading screen after shooting the bear? If so, the bear probably respawned in good health when you came back. This issue was fixed a while back and seems to be back after one of the recent updates. I've noticed the same behavior with bear, deer, and wolves recently. If you shoot them and go indoors before they die, it's likely that the animal will be back to normal when you go out again. I've lost a number of arrows that way. If you wait outside long enough after shooting the animal, it will eventually bleed out.

I've noticed animals sinking into the snow, too. Usually, in those cases, going indoors (or somewhere with a loading screen) and coming back brought the carcass back to the top of the snow. There was an item in one of the recent updates about animals falling into the snow, but maybe it's not quite fixed. I had a similar issue on flat ice yesterday. I killed a wolf on the ice in Desolation Point, retrieved my arrow and left the carcass there. Came back out the next day to harvest the wolf and it wasn't visible. Crows were circling the spot for several days, but I could never find a carcass or feathers. I submitted a bug report for it.

That happened to me in Mystery Lake, just before Errant Pilgrim came out. I was hunting a moose near the cabin north of Unnamed Pond. Approaching that clearing area from the cabin, there's a tree with branches coming out of the slope on the left. Just beyond, there's a thicker tree coming at an angle from flatter ground. I threw a stone to get the moose to move out of the clearing, then ran up that thicker tree. When the moose returned I waited near the tree for it to charge, shot an arrow in the moose, and scampered up the tree. The moose ran right up the tree and said hello, in its rib-stomping sort of way. I haven't tried it with the thinner trees, but it seems the animals can path up those thicker trees.

Thanks for the video! I never noticed this behavior before yesterday - never had a wolf walk away from a decoy like that, even in Errant Pilgrim. Since starting a new game yesterday, it's happening every time for me now.

Were you dropping the decoy to get away or to kill the wolf? The behavior changed not too long ago so wolves no longer blindly walk to the decoy. If you aim a weapon at the wolf as it approaches the decoy, it will either run away or attack. The decoy itself hasn't changed, as far as I know. It can be raw or cooked meat, uncured guts, or rabbit carcasses. Anything that drops to the ground when you press the decoy key/button. The mechanics should be the same - drop the decoy when the wolf "locks on" to you. I think there is still a chance the wolf will ignore the decoy, but you should usually hear a difference and see a difference in its walk when it's going for the decoy.

It doesn't work like that anymore. Now, a wolf will stand next to the fire and growl at you. If you aim or throw something at the wolf, it might run away or might attack. I was just in an early Interloper run and lured a wolf into a deer to get some deer meat. I started a fire near the wolf and it stood there growling. I threw a torch at the wolf and it attacked. Regarding the snow shelter, I was dragged out of one to face a wolf once, next to the Camp Office in Mystery Lake. I built a snow shelter behind the building and went into it to harvest meat from quartered bags. A wolf came from somewhere nearby and snatched me right out of the shelter. This was a number of releases ago, so I don't know if it's the same now.

I started a new custom game with Interloper settings and set timberwolf spawns to none. I scrolled through the rest of the settings and saw that rifle was "no", but revolver was "yes". I wonder if that's a bug or is there actually a chance of a revolver spawn in Interloper?

I haven't experienced a wolf turning around after dropping a decoy. I think the main change was that a wolf will now break away from the decoy and attack if you aim a gun or draw a bow while the wolf is walking up to the decoy, no matter how close you are to the decoy. In my experience, the wolf will sometimes run away instead of attacking when I aim a weapon. The change definitely makes things more interesting. I agree it was pretty simple to kill wolves before. Now it's more likely that you'll end up in a wolf struggle when you're hunting wolves (when your aim is as bad as mine, at least).

Stones as a distraction or deterrent? From my encounters in story mode and my brief encounter in survival, I think the timberwolves are attracted to you when they're beyond a stone's throw away, so a distraction probably won't work. I did try throwing stones at them in my first survival encounter, when I also used the flare gun. I bounced a stone off a timberwolf and it didn't seem to make any difference. I was too focused on trying to follow where they were going to notice if the bar at the bottom of the screen changed when I hit one with a stone. Maybe stones would help if you're in a place where the timberwolves can't get to you and you have time to sit there and throw them. On the bright side, I just noticed that timberwolf spawns can be disabled in custom settings. I've always enjoyed vanilla Interloper and I've never started a custom game, but I'll use Interloper settings without the timberwolves now. I'm excited to explore the new region again, but first, off to the forge and all that.

Same here... I think it gives it an arcade game feel that's out of place in this otherwise amazing environment.

Thanks, and yeah, I hope there is a tactic for timberwolves in Interloper. I thought about my post as I wandered through the ice caves in my new HRV run. I probably shouldn't have posted in such a salty frame of mind. I can deal with a long run being cut short by an unexpected wolf or bear, been there many times before. But the timberwolves are a different story. They seem to detect us from a long distance, whether or not we're carrying smelly things. Fire doesn't seem to affect them, maybe just those blue flares. Without a gun, I wonder how we'll deal with timberwolves in Interloper.

I knew I shouldn't have brought my long-running Interloper character into the new region. I came in from the Ravine entrance, across the logs, and was molested by a pack of 4 timberwolves. I made a fire up against a rock wall, which only seemed to encourage the wolves. One ran right through the fire to take a chunk out of me. I used up my 3 flares. I'm a horrible shot with the flare gun (never seem to remember to aim higher than I think I should) and didn't actually hit any, but the bar at the bottom of the screen went down and they ran away. I should have gone back to the ravine then, but found a cave on the left side. I warmed up and ventured out of the cave to have a look around (not carrying any scents but that doesn't seem to matter), and the wolves were back on me at about the same time as the warning bar at the bottom of the screen. It was a fairly short and pathetic battle. I killed one with an arrow and the others kept coming. I didn't last long. How are we supposed to deal with timberwolves in Interloper? I started a new run and I'm not going anywhere near the new region in Interloper again. Probably.

I'm always curious about rates of decay on certain items in certain places. Things are written regularly about storing items indoors, outdoors, in containers, etc. I've been testing some things in my current Interloper run: Bedrolls (normal ones, not bearskin bedrolls): I've read that bedrolls should not be left on a cave floor in a flattened state, and should not be kept in inventory, that they last longest left rolled up on the floor. I have 3 bedrolls and repaired all of them to 100%. All showed 100% when I started the test but were repaired at different times so I assumed the results could vary within 1 percent. I left one bedroll in my inventory and two in the back of the Lake Overlook cave in Mystery Lake - one rolled up and one flat. After 25 in-game days, never slept in any bedroll, all three bedrolls show 90%. Maybe there are some very slight differences in rates of decay, but I think it doesn't matter if you put the bedroll in your inventory or leave it flat or rolled up. Clothing: I usually take off as many clothes as I can before sleeping (leaving in my inventory), thinking they won't decay as much as if I sleep in them. I'm assuming clothes decay more when slept in, but I haven't tested that one yet. I wondered if clothing would last longer if dropped on the floor vs. left in my inventory each night. I tested with a pair of socks, both repaired to 100%, one left in my inventory and never worn, and one left on the Camp Office floor. I didn't track the number of days, but by the time the socks in my inventory reached 60%, the socks on the floor were also 60%, so I assume it doesn't make a difference between inventory and floor. I tested a pair of wool touques, one left on a table and one left in a fridge. Same thing - they both went from 100% to 80% in the same time period. Meat: We know that meat decays much faster indoors than outdoors, but what about outdoor caves with the warm rear section? Saplings and hides will cure back there, so I had always assumed meat would decay at indoor rates. Nope. I tried caves in DP, ML, and HRV. I left raw and cooked meat in the snow outside of the cave, just inside the cave, and all the way in the back of the cave. The raw pieces were the same size and condition, same with the cooked. Always, the cooked pieces decayed the same amount and the raw pieces decayed the same. It doesn't seem to matter where meat is dropped in outdoor caves. Same with outdoor containers - raw or cooked meat doesn't decay any differently if left on the ground or in an outdoor container like a metal box or a car trunk.

I'm playing a new Interloper run and found a mag lens in Mystery Lake. I don't think anything has changed with them. I don't think they are guaranteed to be in a single place every time (though maybe in a known place if you know the loot tables and find what spawns in certain locations).

Good info, and it's not obvious when putting on clothes. The hat slots at the upper left are an exception - the inner (right) slot is the outer layer.

Dawn in Forlorn Muskeg

Yes, I'll assume that's how it was designed because that's how it works. Do you know otherwise? If the developers have stated somewhere that the game is not designed to work this way, I'd call it a bug, or part of the game that is not finished. We don't know every decision that went into the planning and development of this game, and the side-effects of those decisions. Maybe the calorie issue is one the developers didn't like, but left it this way because of other factors. Who knows?

Thanks, @FunkyFuggerson and @ThePancakeLady. I lit a fire at the back of the tail section and slept an hour or two at a time until the sky started getting lighter. At that point, I made sure the fire had a long time left to burn, then stood as close as I dared to the edge of the floor. I set the stopwatch on my phone, stayed away from the mouse, and pressed F10 every 30 seconds. When the clouds lit up, I pressed F10 every 20 seconds. I did that for around 20 minutes in real time. It's annoying that the view shifts left and right, not sure why it does that. I could see it happening as I waited between pressing F10. Now and then, the view would slowly pan right, then after a bit, it would slowly pan back to the left, always the same amount. When I was done I had around 50 large screenshots on my desktop. I opened them in Photoshop, resized each to 1000 pixels wide, applied a little sharpening, and saved. I know there are programs out there to do this to multiple files at the same time, but I didn't get around to looking one up. My older Photoshop install includes ImageReady. I imported the 50-some images into ImageReady, set the timing, and exported the gif. I got lucky there. I spent two nights at the tail section, this was the second morning. The first morning was foggy and snowing, got lucky with the second morning. Overall, the weather was decent in the couple days I spent there, only one short blizzard and some calm clear times each day. I'm on Interloper around day 85, so it was cold, but not too bad during the afternoons. I was hoping to find more food, only got a few boxes of salty crackers.

Morning from the tail section on the summit of Timberwolf Mountain

Open late.

I recently tested this in Desolation Point. I had two pieces of cooked bear meat, same weight, at 80%. I put one piece in one of the lockers beneath the outside stairs in Hibernia and put the other piece in the snow next to the locker. I checked on them every few days or so, until they were down around 20%. Both pieces decayed the same amount every time I checked.

Moon rising at Desolation Point