Dan_

Wohoo, took a break from work to play it for a couple minutes. I think the loot balancing is pretty good, will give a challenge for newer players and some entertainment for the grizzled veterans. Ketchup fries sound delicious (well designed packaging as well), and I'm already loving the colder inside temperatures. Can hardly wait to get to mountaineer's hut and check how much colder it is now.

Awww... I understand the need to release the event on a monday, so any eventual hiccups can be fixed within business hours but man I would love to play the event in this rainy, cold and miserable weekend. 😆

Excited for any new cool features that the event might add!

3 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

Ah yes... I did that once in Deadman mode when I got cornered by a gang of rabbits. I jumped off the rail bridge over the Ravine. I even took a picture.

With the possibility of disabling birch bark crafting, the old style deadman is possible and doable. If you ever decide to take up the challenge again, please document and post it, loved reading your survival stories on the forums. It was like a daily ritual for me!

This is insanely detailed, absolutely love it! Amazing job at the mountaineer's hut recreation and camp office as well, great to see someone so talented and passionate about both games, if only I could like your posts more than once. 

11 hours ago, sonics01 said:

But again, rare item would be a good idea too. But the spec of rare item should be carefully controlled, not to break the game balance. Some experts in TLD says even interloper is too easy... But it would be fun. I would love to see other rifles as rare item, or speical-skin "looks cool" Lee-Enfield rifle, or specially engraved hunting knife or etc... 

And a lot of part for 'hints' or 'clues' should be randomized, and carefully hidden. I think devs should not even disclose about detail of patch for such "hidden clues" or "hidden rare items" or "hidden mystery". Just give very tiny tiny hint, and let players deduct and find and figure out everything, just like Fenn did. Any opened "secret contents" will be broadcasted and opened to YT and Twitch and that will be no more "secret contents".  

Well, I'm no expert ( not like Kimiota, for example ) in the game but Interloper is really easy once you get the hang of it. As long as you weigh in the risk-taking it's really hard to die, that or you take an ill prepared survivor to bleak inlet with only a few arrows to his name. 🤣

I agree that any potential rewards have to be carefully set up in order to not spoil the game balance. In all honesty, there are many ways to "game" the mechanics and make the game considerably easier ( looking at you skills tree ). The engraved hunting knife would be a cool addition, I always wanted Jeremiah's knife skin to be in the game. Having an endgame exit of the island would be cool as well, but I suspect it is something that is coming with the conclusion of story mode. 

Also, agree that any kind of scavenger hunt would preclude me from watching any streams or even visiting some of the forums here, no value in losing the feeling of unravelling the mystery at first. 

8 hours ago, piddy3825 said:

Yeah, she was pretty amazing for sure and it really looked like there was gonna be a three way battle to the finish for a while there.  I think however, had she not conceded when she did, the show would have medically disqualified her for health concerns.  Had Nathan's shelter not caught fire, do you  think we might have seen he and Jordan maybe hitting that 90 day mark?  

Pretty much what she said afterwards, her BMI and BF% were approaching dangerous levels and incurring the risk of organ failure ( much like happened to several other participants throughout the years of the show ). She would have been pulled on her next med-check a few days after, at least this is what the medical crew told her. 

As for Nathan, dude was a resilient SOB as well, shame his shelter did go up in flames even though he expressed that possibility during the series. Even more impressive considering he is the first dude in Alone history to not bring a ferro rod to the show ( there was another dude in season 2 who lost his ferro rod and successfully made friction fires for tens of days, in rainy british columbia no less.. ), dude was driven for the desire to buy his own land and live peacefully off-grid. I commend his hardship and skills, hope he gets another shot sometime. Maybe he could push to day 90 or even close to the centenary mark but with the bountiful of food that JJ had, no chance of winning. One caveat I have for Nathan is that a Moose came strolling through his camp on the first few nights, so he had an area with Moose to harvest, maybe his tracking and hunting skills lacked a bit, I'm not sure. 

On 6/20/2020 at 3:20 PM, RandomP1ayer said:

That shelter that Wionya built with the double walled construction with the peeled bark interior was bushcraft shelter building taken to extraordinary levels.  I can't watch bushcraft shelter building anymore on YouTube without thinking how amateurish their shelters look in comparison to her's.

Woniya was a freaking badass in the show, her detailed explanation for the design objectives was mindblowing. She strikes me as a very intelligent and well spoken person, shame the editing hides much of their true personalities and focus on the rollercoaster of hardship and joy that is costantly presented to the viewers.

SPOILER ALERT!

Spoilers from Season 6 and 3 below!!

I was not aware of the Fenn treasure hunt before reading your post, thank you for inadvertently sharing this amazing piece of trivia! I've got some googling and reading to do now!

The endgame idea is appealing but the treasure hunt is even more appealing gameplay wise in itself. 

Imagine if instead of finding an out of Great bear, the hunt leads you to a rare item like a native-built cloak made from the hide of the legendary white stag, it offers special abilities ( reducing your detection range for wolves as a stealth enhancer,  or better weatherproofing for example ) or a prized bowie knife or proper felling axe with increased durability and artsy design? 

A bow drill ( friction fire ) was indeed present in the original roadmap for the game, though I'm not sure if it still has any relevance to how the devs approach the game nowadays.

I love the maglens and use it almost exclusively to make my fires, specially after you get decent crafted clothing and are able to easily warm up in caves. However, a way to make friction fire would be an awesome addition to the game. Yes you can pretty much wait out for a couple days, in any region and any difficulty and have a small time window where the sky is clear and the sun shining to get that maglens fire and harvest that bear or moose, but it'd be awesome if it was possible for your survivor to turn into a complete badass and survive from natural sourced materials and clothing(already possible) only. 

Looks very theatrical, as if a character would step out of the shadows and start a long and winded monologue about the suffering and despair of the many pinky toes that met their demise in the shadow realm that calls itself "the farmhouse". 

Yep, your new roomie. 

2 hours ago, piddy3825 said:

well to be honest, my geekage could be better...  When I get together with my buddies (many of whom are in IT) and they start talking tech, my eyes do glaze over a bit, but I'd like to think I'm tech savvy enough to build my own box.  At the very least able to put part A in slot B correctly so that the thing works when I turn it on, lol.   That being said,  where I'd really love is some recommendations on is where to buy?   So many choices,  you know?  

Hahah sorry about that! Sometimes we do get carried over. There's so much information available nowadays that even IT people sometimes get overwhelmed when they haven't put a system together for a long time. You can be hardware savvy and come from other walks of life, absolutely! Choosing Ryzen means you're very well synced to the industry and overall consensus of the hardware world. 

1 hour ago, piddy3825 said:

Vancouver, WA USA  

I used to purchase computer parts from Newegg here in the states, but last time I was on their site to make a purchase my credit card company flagged them as being "suspect" and blocked the transaction for my safety.  I was buying a Roomba at the time, lol

And I was going to suggest newegg anyway, it's the steak and potatoes of PC assembly even though amazon sometimes has better deals on select parts. I'd say check 'em both and see. Anyway, got that Roomba? Is it any good? Asking for a friend. 

I was wondering how much well versed the OP is in the computer geek world, and how should I go on about explaining IF in a concise way but jeffpeng managed to pull it off. Honestly, with RAM coming down on price lately I'd get (a single matching kit of) 32GBs just for running big VMs, that or Google updates chrome to chew through even more RAM. 🤣

Maybe it's me taking a long time away from the game or the fact that I usually start very few new games nowadays but, I feel like they meddled ( pesky hinterland kids! ) with the beachcombing loot table. I'm playing on a new loper and spawned in DP, so naturally I ran over the beach from Katie's all the way to the the Broken Bridge looking for some clothing and perhaps a fishy fish for supper and then BAM. Two birch and one maple sapling to begin my journey, made the trip through Crumbling Highway and got to CH and found two more birch saplings. 

Usually, I only beachcomb to restock up on saplings but damn right I've never found this much before in so little time. Usually, I find one sapling per week/beachcomb cycle. 

From the looks of it you got a formidable budget to work with, which is ideal when you upgrade less frequently. I'd still wait out for Big Navi and Ampére and buy something late this year/early next year, if the speculation is to be trusted you're maybe looking at the biggest leap in GPU performance in the last decade or so.  Echoing @jeffpeng, I'd advise you to skip the most expensive CPU ( Threadrippers and Ryzen 9 onwards ) options given these won't give you significant gaming performance gains over spending the extra money on the GPU or investing in fast RAM with good timings (Detail: Expensive RAM ~ Good RAM )

Good luck.

23 hours ago, Griffen said:

... Perhaps allow survivors to reinforce the insulation of a safe house to improve the indoor temperature.  Granted, that might require making houses less insulating to begin with for balance. 

Very thoughtful post full of good ideas, I was nodding in agreement as I was reading it. 

In regards to safehouse insulation, I wish we could have the inside temperatures vary with the outside temperatures for all buildings as it once were in the days of yore. I know that's not an easy task but my favourite building has it ( mountaineer's hut ), I wish the buildings with a transition also had this feature implemented. I rarely use indoor stoves, this would make them twice as useful.

I'm rocking a cheapo mid range system I put together 3 years ago, still decent for me given I don't play the lastest and craziest games graphics-wise:

Ryzen 5 1400 @ 3.8Ghz + Asus B350 TUF Gaming Plus + Gigabyte 1060 6GB Windforce OC + 16GBs of HyperX Predator 3000Mhz RAM + Sandisk 240GB SSD and WD Green HDD 1TB + Corsair CX650 80+ bronze PSU. I know there are some weird choices there but the 1400 was a bargain deal ( given it did not sell as well as the 1600 at the time ) and the GPU was the cheapest non-mini 1060 6Gig I could find at the time. 

I've been following the recent hardware developments given I shall be upgrading within the next couple years and my advice for you would be to wait. Both NVIDIA and AMD are maybe coming up with new GPUs before the end of the year, AMD will refresh Ryzen one last time before Zen 3 finally arrives next year and maybe Intel can pull through and deliver 10nm by early next year ( doubtful ). 

Or... if you have a decent CPU and just want a quick and cheap kick in the pants performance bump in the meantime, you could order a cheapo used 4Gig RX570/580 from a known chinese webstore ( if you are outside the US, the US ebay has pretty sweet deals on everything ), update the BIOS, change the thermal paste and you have a pretty good GPU for TLD for the price of a good night out ( which you can't have anyway, given the human malware ).

40 minutes ago, piddy3825 said:

Yeah, it's that selective editing that leaves out the "real" story.  There musta been hundreds of hours of video content from the contestants that could have been utilized that would have made the series better.  I would have liked to see deeper character development myself as that would have made the series more interesting and a little more personable.   Still surprised at how it all turned out in the end, right?

Yep, spot on in every account. You can follow the winners after the show on social media and they all complain at how much filming they've done and how little was actually used, it's frustrating to them. 

Show is still pretty good, there's nothing quite like it. It's like no bs survivorman. I love it, new series premiering day June 11th if I'm not mistaken.

On 6/7/2020 at 4:01 PM, ManicManiac said:

I've been playing for a long while too (since the later end of 2014)...  I really miss that scene of the Trapper's Homestead and the original theme.
I think I'd like to just have that back.

Agree, Trapper's is the TLD'er original home. Since the concept art stages it has been featured as such, only the Mountaineer's hut comes close to it IMO.

21 hours ago, Glflegolas said:

I know for a fact that regular knives and hatchets don't spawn in Interloper, but the Hushed River Valley has a number of guaranteed spawns if I am not mistaken.

Interloper relies on static spawns ( manually placed in the maps by the devs ) and a very different set of loot tables from the other modes. No tools ever spawn in interloper, apart from bugs ( I've found knives at Trapper's once ). HRV is no exception to this rule. 

On 5/20/2020 at 8:58 AM, RobTheFurious342 said:

Hi I am new and I was wondering if there’s any tips and tricks they should know before starting a play through

I'm not sure if this is useful by now, but the only advice I give you is to carry a supply of first aid provisions.

Two bandages, two old-mans-beard dressing and one antibiotics or reishi tea. This way you can go out there, explore and even patch up after dancing with the wolves for a bit. It's no fun dying of dysentheria, getting an infection or even bleeding to death. It's a lot better to wrestle  the wolves and go down in a blaze of glory. 

Agree on not using maps for the sheer exploration experience, nothing wrong if you prefer to use them though. Game is awesome both ways.

Enjoy! 

17 hours ago, piddy3825 said:

For these folks to be "trained" survival experts is kinda laughable and some of the "bushcraft" ie, shelter building is strictly amature.   Most of these survival experts are good at short term survival, but fall grossly short on long term survival preparedness.  One of the funniest segments so far was when one of the contestants shot a squirrel with a bow, only wounding it, and when she picked it up it bit her in the fleshy part of hand between her thumb and forefinger and clamped down hard.  They werent wearing any gloves and that little squirrel got a good bite and wasn't planning on letting go anytime soon.   Good entertainment.  lol  

You see, that's kinda my point. The editing makes the contestants look like complete imbeciles, when in reality most of them are fairly competent outdoorsmen. Any mental breakdowns or "missing my family" moments, f-ups with an axe or while hunting are highlighted in detriment to interesting facets of their day-to-day survival. The amateurish shelter building is done more to save calories, though some of the contestants really have done bad designs.

These mental errrors happen with the starvation and solitude, not everyone can handle them well. It's a starvation and mental fortitude game after all. Well, some of the contestants are absolutely careless for someone alone in woods, but the majority is pretty skilled and avoid dumb accidents.

I'm not gonna spoil anything, but some of the seasons had the hardest badasses out there. Honestly, look past the TV seasoning and the show is pretty amazing. 

16 hours ago, peteloud said:

After playing the game for many, many hours I find very little need for paint cans.  I simply ignore them.  They are too heavy to carry around.

 

I can't be bothered to make stone caches either.  I store resources in the caves and cabins at which I normally stay.

Yep, pretty much my experience with the update so far. Returned to the game after a few months away, this update is packed of cool features for the average players, but has little to offer for the small sliver of pie(rocks are lighter, so are arrowheads from what I remember...I'm happy with this). I'm fine with that, at least I'm not experiencing any bugs like what I had when EP first came out. 

I feel like the game is at a stage where if an update doesn't break anything with bugs, I'm happy with whatever feature it adds. 

I'm huge fan of the show, not sure which seasons are available on your local Netflix but I sure recommend for those who like survival training and "bushcrafting".

Just one pointer, the editing is terrible. They pipe in fake "animal fear" drama and show very little of the contestants abilities and smart builds ( traps, shelters, tools and whatnot ). Honestly, the producers and editors try the hardest for the contestants to look like absolute numb-numbs to the broader audience, the vast majority of them are survival experts, trappers, bushmen and women of all sorts. Look up their social media after finishing the show, most of them produce videos to show their shelters and techniques used in the show. There are the occasional goofs at each season, though but I assume those are there just for comic relief (Desmond from S2 is a prime example).

I'd say they could implement it, but only if we get a Myfitnesspal page on the diary so I could track my macros for those rabbit gainz. 💪

I'd love some sort of complete macro nutrient system, in addition to tracking calories and gaining excess fat or getting weakened from loss of muscle tissue due to starvation. But I suspect I would be in the crushing minority, it would make the game clunkier and no more fun to play just for the sake of simulation for most players. I understand the OP is suggesting something simpler and way more palatable ( see what I did there? ) gameplay-wise, but I think it's fair to question how much of the player base survives on rabbit meat alone? And crucially, would these impact the gameplay experience at all? I'd wager it wouldn't.