Dan_

I struggled in finding a way to deal or circumvent the Timbys when I first got to BI at the launch date but lately I kinda resorted back to just killing them if they ever spot me. Crounching and distracting them with stones work really well, but only if you're aware of the pack movement patterns and can spot them first. So if I don't have archery level 5 I'll just wait until a nice windless day, drop a fire and shoot them straight on. Bring enough arrows and you're set. Other strat is getting some raw meat and drawing them out from distance, they all line up beautifully for some long range snipes. You can shoot one of them and then drop the meat in order to make the rest of the pack give up and give you more distance, then rinse and repeat. Easy when crouched, hard when standing because of the distance.

Pity the living creatures of Great Bear, for they had no idea of the evil that was to descend upon them. Such malevolence would consume lives without ever needing the warm touch of flesh and blood, without the thrill of the hunt nor the honorable struggle of the fight. An eldritch entity, a distraught druid or a vengeful revenant? The old lore only speak of it in hush tones and fearful mumblings, for it is known as the Darkwalker.

Ohohoh! This makes it sound like we are going to need special ash saplings to make the shafts for the bear spear eh? Good detective work!

I was doing a forensics examination of the images to see if there were hidden clues but, can we just stop for a second and appreciate how not only do we get amazing artwork that looks like this and then the final playable product looks very much like it? TLD has to be one of the most iconic pieces of game design of the past decade, hands down. Super excited for the event, horror and supernatural are not my cuppa but I trust this will be very well done and a ton of fun. Thank you for listening to the community and not awarding badges for separate days of playtime. I missed the last 4DON badges because I had tons of work to do and couldn't play a single day, I also appreciate the extended availability of the event. Top notch stuff fellas. Any Survival mode update just means a couple more hundred hours of play time to me, triple that if it includes a new region. Also, new gear items? Damn, you gals and guys are spoiling us.

I usually kill wildlife to eat in TLD, if I don't need the food I usually won't mess with the animals if they don't want to mess with me, given the bow is absolutely and undeniably THE superior hunting weapon, it's only a natural choice my friend! I'll give you that the revolver is very good for self-defense, but the bow is not too shabby either. Also I like roleplaying discount Legolas, so there's that.

I feel like there are no inherently "bad" regions, but there are multiple favourites. If I had to pick one it has to Timberwolf Mountain. It's scenic, wild, great hunting, interesting spots, has fishing and perhaps the single most charming building on all of Great Bear, the Mountaineer's Hut. The plane crash site has much less gore than the PV one and the scenery is absolutely beautiful. Maybe it's my own role-play of Dick Proenneke's twin lakes lifestyle talking here, but I absolutely love TWM. Just sit by the porch and face the peak, watch in awe as the blizzards rage on and get slowly replaced by the spectra of northern lights, go out distracted and get chomped on by the wolves. It just embodies what the game is all about. I'm also a huge fan of Forlorn Muskeg, for the lack of proper shelter. PV and ML are also old favourites, HRV is wonderfully sprawling and interesting, DP is an absolute cracker, it's just missing some ice fishing and a slight expansion. Even CH , MT and BR have redeeming features, like the hunting lodge and ravine at BR and the backwoods at CH with cabins tucked in are really cool, I just wish the cabins were less generic looking, you know what I'm sayin'? Forgot BI. I'm learning to love it, pretty cool structure and some very cool spots. Timberwolves are also not so bad if you have enough arrows.

Yeah I kinda agree, I suggested cloth as a wick but I'm not sure it would work either. I suppose rendering the tallow takes firewood and that alone would make the candles "not free", add in some prep time to remove impurities from the tallow and we're good. I know this is OT but ideas like these leave me wanting for mod support, HL dev. schedule is already tight given they always seem to be hiring more and more people so having extra people working on less crucial features would be cool, the modding tools would take up dev time as well so there's that aspect.

I'd love to have candles just for the cool screenshots and base decor, game mechanics notwithstanding. Make it so that the wick uses cloth so they're not "free" and I'm good.

Wow, I've never thought of thunderstorms being rare in the far north latitudes but it makes complete sense, cool knowledge. Thank you for sharing! In regards to the OP, I think friction fire is something I think would make me enjoy the game more. I don't think I'd ever sleep on an inside building ever again if I had infinite firemaking supplies, just pop a protected fire against a rockface and sleep the blizzards away, without match saving anxiety ever crossing your mind for a fleeting second. I'd like that.

Hi @TitanTreks! Welcome to the community! The first question has been answered, but just to give you more details: Specific clothing pieces affect your sprint bar differently, as a general rule, the animal skin clothing is by far the heaviest and the most taxing on your mobility, you can check the sprint reduction via an icon on the clothing item being displayed at the menu ( the sprinting man pictogram, specifically ). The lookout at CH is indeed an indoor location as far as cabin fever mechanics are concerned. CH has plenty of pretty cool locations to set up shop, I absolutely love the fishing camp for it's outdoor crafting table, there's fishing a couple dozen steps away, there's beachcombing ( which is good little bonus for sapling and scrap renewal ), tons of firewood climbing the hill towards the bear creek campgrounds and the bear comes close to your door, so you don't even have to search for him for a good hunt. I also love the Quonset more and more, the wolves are not so bad(you can draw them to the ice if you're not confident in close range shooting) and there's space to store your stuff, close by fishing, Bear and Moose right by the backyard and DP is a stone's throw away. People are adamant on jackrabbit being a good base but I'm not a fan at all. Cheers and welcome!

Yeah, both survival and story mode have adjustable difficulty, so you should find your footing first and see which difficulty you are most comfortable with. But honestly, I'd say just play survival and try the different difficulty modes. Pick the one that kills you every single time you're starting to have fun. If you like survival games, Pilgrim is not for you and Voyager is also way too educational. Start with Stalker which is reasonably difficult and has every single lootable item available, Interloper is more balanced mechanics wise and more fun to play IMO, but it cuts a huge chunk of the items in the game so it would deprive you of guns, high level clothing, good tools and so on.

Humm, I did not know about this thread until today so I'll chime in with some of my favourites. Some absolutely bang on lists here, but here's mine. ( I'm also in IT, btw ). After filling out the list from the top of my head, I suddenly realize the number of extensively played games decrease as I age, less time and less enthusiasm for console gaming. PC Games Mount and Blade ( Native Warband and mods, still waiting for the pendor and LOTR mods for bannerlord, this is my biggest time sink, even more than TLD ). Psygnosis' Metal Fatigue ( Oldie ) Railroad Tycoon 2 ( also old ) Stardew Valley Warcraft 3 ETS2 and ATS, great to listen to podcasts with. F1 from Codies Assetto Corsa - though I haven't touched it in months AOE2 and 3 Xplane11 ( MSFS2020 now, of course ) KCD (brilliant) Modded minecraft, I'll throw it in as well. Not a fan of vanilla but back then I played a mod called Terrafirmacraft. The Elder Scrolls Series ( Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim ). Excited for Skywind, check it out. Civilization 5 ( Edited to add ). Consoles Genesis Super Monaco GP Streets of Rage Sonic ( 1,2,3, 3D.. tons of great games ) Mortal Kombat, 2 is specially good but many decent games in the MK franchise. Revenge of the shinobi Yu Yu Hakusho: Sunset Fighters ( Yu Yu Hakusho Makyō Tōitsusen ) Winter Olympics Lillehammer '94 Street Fighter 2 : The new challengers FIFA 96 SNES Chrono Trigger ( hands down ) Internation Superstar Soccer Deluxe The Legend of Zelda : A Link to the past Super Mario World ( and kart ) PSX Metal Gear Solid Chrono Cross Vagrant Story Harvest Moon - BTN RE2 and Resident Evil 3 Gran Turismo 2 FF7 and FF9 PS2 Gran Turismo 4 God of War MGS 3 Shadow of the Colossus PS3 MGS 4 Uncharted I and II F1 2013 Red dead redemption PS4 The Witcher 3 GTA 5

To the OP, I get exactly what you're saying @Niev. There's this amazing curve of... quality to this game. Meaning, the early experience is phenomenal and gets you on edge and addicted quickly, it compounds with the amazing ambiance, the incredible visuals, the beautifully crafted sound design ( one of the strongest points of the game, IMO ) and interesting survival and crafting mechanics that take a given level of progression (in-game and player skill progression) to achieve. The first experience is just brilliant and makes a mark on us. After you get your game set up and your playing skill increase, you start to find the game to be easy and that early dose of adrenalin is suddenly gone. This is where the people that usually post here diverge, because you can find new ways to enjoy the game or it kinda grows stale and repetitive, which is why many ( myself included ) try and find challenges to get that early game fix back, but to be honest, you're just fiddling with the game mechanics at this point, the game is never the same again after you conquered it. So I can see the whys in your post and I agree that the usual steam gamer will drift towards other survival titles after a few hours in TLD. Hence why the developers have put a ton of focus on improving and finishing story mode, I guess this is the 'canon' way to play the game and this is how they cater to this target (and much larger) audience, structured gameplay and storytelling. Posts like yours help Hinterland immensely I feel. I think I'd love to see your late game ideas implemented ( or at least considered ) and I can see the general idea behind improving and building upon the general state of the late game. By now, I feel like every change and addition will have story mode as a primary driver and that's great, any new content is absolutely great past my 800hrs of gameplay. But having fresh takes of feedback is always refreshing to see and given HL's track record of usually hitting the marks with their careful game balancing, I'm pretty sure many of these ideas float around in their brainstorming sessions. Never hold back on feedback, just keep the long posts coming.

Not to be pedantic, but the same could be said to every single customizable parameter in the game. That doesn't lead to any productive conclusion or valid feedback when assessing features, qualities or quirks of the game, which I presume is the ethos behind the official forums, no? If we go back to the OP, it is presenting a rare situation in which the game demands a non-practical amount of time to be spent IRL in front of a black screen. The only way to circumvent it is through an exploit. I'm pretty sure HL will want to take a look at these whenever they feel it is possible, given their packed dev. schedule.

I think it is safe to say that work hasn't been "normal" for quite some time now and having been experiencing the same boatload of zoom calls and remote work in the past six months for sure have taken a toll on me and the rest of the team I work with as well, Imagine getting voice acting done amidst the travel regulations, or coordinating with remote people to build screenplay and do creative stuff? Tough stuff. I don't think anybody of a healthy mind would desire HL to overwork or crunch towards a self-imposed deadline, if anything, redux showed us that you folks can tell a very compelling story when you work at your own pace and strive to achieve ambitious design goals without compromising on quality or scope. This year has been a massive outlier for everyone, I'm just glad everybody at HL is healthy and safe. Oh and amazing artwork as always, that black rock and background could be an amazing poster. Wouldn't mind hanging it out of a wall at my living room.

Agreed, clumsy mechanic in an otherwise very well balanced sandbox. The status quo of the cabin fever implications are pointless. You can as shown and explained in this thread, bypass them by harvesting clothing items and cancelling the operation before it is complete. If a new player is unaware of this, he/she might just toss that save aside or even let go of the game altogether, where's the fun in waiting IRL hours on end staring at a black screen? My suggestion for eliminating cabin fever altogether is simple: Give all indoor locations variable temps, make the rickety and poorly insulated cabins have worse thermal properties than a warm cave. This way you'd need a fire when it gets cold, regardless of being inside or outside, but you'd still get the fire duration bonus when outside and that might make camping more attractive, that and the fact that you would need to procure firewood and leave your comfy cabin every once in a while. A real reason to be outside, dont'ya think? Winter's embrace has shown a preview of this by dropping the temps, I'd say take it further and make indoor locations not so OP. Scale the inside/outside temp delta with difficulty: Pilgrim : stays at it is - Inside temps are fixed per building, buildings provide good warmth regardless of outside conditions. Voyager : buildings get huge positive offsets. Compound this with the current best clothing set available and test the weather models to ensure you'll get a cold night every once in a blue moon, regardless of clothing. Stalker gets medium sized offsets. Loper gets little to non-offset, again depending on the building. The Farmhouse in PV should be warmer than Skeeter's basement and so on. They could make each building even more unique this way. The Hunting lodge has a six pot stove with a moose and workbench? Give it non-sealing windows and say it is badly insulated. Custom : You choose.

Saplings are renewable through a semi-hidden mechanic in the game: Beachcombing. Go to Any region with a coastline ( CH and DP are best for this ) and random items (there's specific items depending on difficulty) will be brought to the shores by the tide. Birch and maple saplings are quite frequent, last time I tracked my beachcombing haul I was averaging more than one sapling per week. Oh, it's also a risk-reward type thing where you can fall through the ice and freeze your bacon while trying to get the items. Good luck!

Well I'm not trying to be pedantic here, but I never said that CF detracts from reality, but rather that it takes away from soft-simulation aspect of the game and game experience, which are completely different things from reality itself, no? Just to give a little bit more context here, I love simulation( sim racing, flight sims, truck sim ) and strategy games. With that said, I'm pretty sure I'm in the absolute minority in the gaming universe. Suppose you had to manage your containers when manipulating fluids and properly sanitize them to hold potable water, let's suppose these containers would take physical space in your bag and that would also have to be managed. If we're talking about expanding the sim aspect, using green lumber should have an effect on your fire and fire lighting success rate, and list goes on and on and on... Absolutely none of these would add anything meaningful to the gaming experience to the overall majority of players, because they are chores, they are tasks that you would have to do in a real simulator that only a small slice of the player base would enjoy. These also would contribute little to nothing to the storytelling aspect that HL likes. The game is a soft-sim, there's a few variables that you need to control like in real life but they are limited as to not spoil the exploration/adventure feel of the game. I can see why HL has taken the design decision to limit this aspect in order to make for a less clunky and complicated experience. Now let's circle back to Cabin Fever. Every single one of the mechanics mentioned above ( water containers, green lumber, eating snow ) you the player can create an abstraction layer and say, okay maybe my survivor doesn't know that he can eat snow for hydration( many people don't ), maybe the container management is done seamlessly, your player just collects random containers from the buildings and these are generically represented as water bottles when you drop them, maybe the player usually only collects dry firewood, etcetera... You can abstract these and still say okay, there are gaps in the simulation ( hence soft-simulation ) but I can still envision the mechanics and have a decent level of immersion when playing. With Cabin Fever, imagine you just took down a pack of wolves, processed the carcasses, tanned the hides, have cooked food and water for days on end and is ready to start crafting your warm wolf fur coat. But then, an insurmountable desire to venture out and experience the cold and dangers outside takes you aback, you can't spend any reasonable amount of time on whichever structure that fits the definition of 'inside". You then proceed to a warm cave and sleep for a few hours outside and then you're good for a few days. Does this seem reasonable or relatable? Having experienced quarantine since February, working, eating, exercising and doing every single thing inside for the past few months, I'm sorry but I can't relate. Removing CF wouldn't make the game clunkier ( quite the opposite ), it would not remove crucial game mechanics nor would it make the game easier ( it really doesn't matter when you cook outside or live in FM or HRV). Once again, CF had it's use back when leaderboards existed, they don't anymore. I understand the OP's frustration and many other new players who stumble upon this finicky mechanic that adds little to nothing to the gameplay experience, nor does it have any correspondence to the soft-sim framework the game lays down for you. Maybe I'm not qualified enough to make this critique, but from my experience, it just seems like a poor game design decision to keep it. My 0.02

Yeah CF is a pretty flawed mechanic. I like having extra duration on my fires so I always cook outside and therefore rarely have it as an issue. Well, apart from when crafting coats and whatnot, then it's pretty much guaranteed I'm going to be managing the CF risk, which is more annoying than hard to be honest. The problem with CF stems from it's origin, it was originally developed to build 'legitimacy' into a survival leaderboard and prevent people from hibernating. Said leaderboard does not exist anymore so the existence of CF still puzzles me, it's really a quick and dirty fix for a non-issue. It does detract from the soft-simulation feel of the game and in my opinion, the experience as a whole. The other issue with it is that you actually can disable it into a custom game and have the problem solved, except that by doing that you do not gain any progression towards feats which again, doesn't really bother me, but it might alienate the completionist players that wish to collect all of those.

I'm all for any additions to the game that do not subtract from the established gameplay mechanics. The game is already fairly easy as it is ( ATDS being the exception ). I get the overall feeling that HL is very zealous when introducing gameplay mechanics and tools as to disturb the sense of balance the game has, but it kinda plays a bit too safe when adding new content to the game. Don't get me wrong, I do not wish to see fully auto guns or zombies in the game, but I feel we're missing some more wilderness practical knowledge, even references to the local natives for example. How did the rugged old time natives survived GBI before the fur-trading and coal mining took hold? I feel HL could explore more in this regard. With that rant out of the way: Agreed on all counts @SirSharper. More crafted shelter options like a simple wikiup made with bark, sticks and poles made from long branches or fallen limbs. Even modern insulated tents would be cool, as long as they fit a proper difficulty setting. Crafting options that do not require the workbench for example, making primitive needles, firestarting kits and natural first-aid, etc. More options, more possibilities make for bigger replayability value.

Interloper is the game mode I feel is the most balanced loot and cold wise If I'm honest, so that's what I play exclusively because it's fun, I'm sure many would beg to differ though. Here's a couple tips, without spoiling too much: Freezing is inevitable, how fast you start freezing your bacon is very much relevant. Tip: Temperatures are at their lowest in the early mornings and start to warm up towards the late afternoon. Avoid travelling early morning unless you have a quick stop for a warming break, preferably an indoor location. A blizzard might come out and spoil the warm afternoon climate, but oftentimes you'll get most of your travelling done without losing too much if you do it after noon and towards dusk. Map knowledge is king, it's okay to die quite often at the start it always was very much a part of the fun to me at the beginning! Tip: Knowing the directions for the major indoor locations of the maps or best looting spots is key. If you get lost in a blizzard and doesn't know how to get to your destination you're toast. This is pretty hard with the current extent of the game maps, HRV and PV are huge, sprawling maps which take time to know even superficially. The tip is to just play and survive, you'll learn in due time. Also, try to memorize possible spawns for deer carcasses ( listen to the crows ) for food and deer hides and try to cure rabbit pelts and guts as well. Crafted clothing is king and deer and bunny gear can be crafted with sewing kits. If travelling and looting a lot are not your cup of tea, ration your food. Yes, you get that sweet well fed bonus if you eat your calories for the day but if you find that food is particularly hard to procure ( cattails man, tons of food in them ) ration and only eat enough for a cool 9-10 hours of sleep. Starving takes little of your condition away. Also, abuse birch bark tea, if gives you crazy condition recovery and you can stack multiple teas for absurd recovery in a single night of sleep. Hope these help! Happy exploring!

I ended up choosing "male" in the poll given most of my starts are with the male character. It's mostly an immersion thing where I can relate to being there in GBI while playing Will. That said, the voice acting is better for the female character and the dialogue is better scripted IMO, so I end up playing the female character when doing challenges and test runs. I like 'em both to be honest.

Hey @stratvox, glad to hear you made out of that hairy situation safe and sound. Wishing you a quick and complete recovery my good sir! Also, great points on the temperature drop. It really brought a more pronounced PVE feel to the game, much like the very early alpha versions. Combine that temp drop with more scarce clothing options and greatly reduced wildlife to boot, we could have a phenomenal PVE where is truthfully challenging to stay warm. Loved it!

Ditto. If there is decay programmed to wood matches I haven't noticed over a few 500 day loper saves.

Sent you a PM. Happy syrup hunting!