Dan_

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.

Yep, I echo the opinions on this very thread. Snow shelters are not really useful unless you're completely turned around and desperate. It's always better to try and keep moving and find a cave or shelter with the 45 minutes it takes to build one. The cloth cost really isn't a factor if you beachcomb, you can find those back easily. I like the view from inside the snow shelter, so I usually go camping with it. 🤣 I know, it's silly but you can get to a corner of the map somewhere and plop a snow shelter down, then hunt and survive in that area. It's really fun. I wish we could craft a teepee.

I think it's safe to say many people do not appreciate the essence of TLD. I bought multiple copies for friends and family and none of them actually play or even enjoy the game. It takes an appreciation for the humbling loneliness and pensive exploration that the game presents to you, most people find it boring and I've got to admit that it doesn't have the friendliest learning curve in the survival genre. It's only natural that many people won't enjoy the experience firsthand. To the OP, I'd truly recommend you to skip story mode altogether and give survival mode a try, it's doesn't have the clunky aspects of story mode, neither does it have it's hand holding features. Just set your expectations straight in the sense that every single one of your characters is expendable, because they'll eventually die. Hinterland has put a lot of effort into Story mode, but survival mode is still where this game it's at. It's just better.

To me this is my only pet peeve with the update, It's been great content-wise but some of the bugs introduced take a lot of the polish and enjoyment of the game for me. I appreciate Hinterland's willingness to publish the update before the holidays, so I can live with the little rough spots here and there until they eventually fix them. Also agree on T-wolves needing more refinement, B.I. is limited to me only after a survivor got archery five and can snipe those doggos safely. If not that, I'm expecting them to make their hide truly unique, and enable us to craft better clothing or gear with it, like Jeremiah's T-wolf cowl, for instance and turn the table on the risk-reward ratio for facing them.

I have done some testing with snaring ( in preparation for my old-style deadman retirement ) in the past and my anedoctal observations are: There's a common conclusion in these forums that the snares take a while to get active after being moved or set up ( like 12 hours ) and are checked for new spawns in intervals of 3 hours after that, so you might need to check multiple times ( often coming out of an indoor location or sleeping to trigger the checks ). I've done exactly this and had good success both in the ravine and trappers ( playing standard interloper ). As long as there is a rabbit there, a bunny grove is considered to be active and can be used to trap rabbits until the population declines. I've tested this at the ravine and got a ton of trapped bunnies even though there was only one rabbit doing the hippity hopping at the time I've set the snares. I've got fewer and fewer as the days gone by, I was using eight snares, mind you. Depending on difficulty level, rabbits are borderline profitable calorie-wise to sustain yourself(not sure if the snares are, stoning is better when you're just moving about). In Interloper I rarely rely on them, just when I need to save a can of food early game for my end game collection ( I'm weird, I know... ). If you like the homesteading playstyle and setting up a long term base, rabbits are definitely a good complement to your calorie surplus but I wouldn't rely on them solely for my nutrition. Also, not harvesting every gut and hide makes them decent for caloric surplus, having a tool to harvest also improves the calorie burn/replenish ratio greatly. Lastly, finding a sweet spot in a rabbit grove will definetely improve your yield. I usually set up long lines of snares and sorta triangulate the overall best spots for setting up the snares, takes a few days but these spots seem to be set in the scenery and won't change in the next playthough I feel like. Good luck trapping!

This. I much rather spend a few more hours mending my clothes and warming up by the fire before setting off in ATDS. Funny how ATDS and Deadman are quite similar in terms of setup and game tuning, but have completely opposite metas. Lowkey good design by Hinterland.

Engraved spurs and a flashy belt buckle, so I can be the hip-shooting desperado of the north. I love the idea of combining the forge to make rough metal shapes and then using the mill to finish them into better tools. Maybe they can vary in quality depending on a milling skill perhaps. This would in fact give me every motivation to get there, so far the cannery is nice but kinda of a letdown in interloper, the zone is beautiful and it has every single big game target but I wish there was something more to do at the workshop, maybe milling screws to make home base repairs or to use as an component for more elaborate tools? Also, candlesticks(still need candles... ) or buckles and awls for leather crafting would be nice, like making a reinforced rucksack with a metal pack frame would be awesome.

Tumbs up for this. It's guaranteed as a matter of fact, every start it's always there. It just moves between two spots.

Interesting data point, does the game default to the better condition weapon if you've got two of them in your inventory? Never had a struggle when carrying multiples of the same tool. I recall someone did extensive struggle testing(can't find the thread now) and found that the best weapon by far is a regular hatchet, then it's a toss up between the hammer and the improvised hatchet(hatchet won by a small margin, but had more variance in damage taken), then the hunting knife and If I recall correctly both the improvised knife and prybar performed poorly. Every single item was repaired to 100% condition at the time of the struggle. From my experience struggling in loper ( I rarely get into struggles ) both the hammer and the improvised hatchet are really good, the improvised knife just takes too long to fill up the struggle bar, much like the prybar. Still, if you've got decent protective clothing and is well rested any weapon will do in a pinch. There seems to be a huge randomness in struggle outcome as well, there were times I could get a wolf off me in a couple seconds and barely took damage, other times the wolf would take half my health bar in no time at all when using the same weapon. It's really hard to gauge weapon efficacy due to this, but my experience with the improvised knife has many lost saves in the past, so I just don't use it. @manolitodeespana Great run buddy! Sucks that FM took your character, plunging into the ice cold water instantly freezes up your clothing and takes a little chunk of your condition as well ( it used to give instant hypothermia, it was a death sentence back then haha! ). FM is really good for seeing the wildlife from afar, but you need to know your way around the weak ice maze. Personally I'll hit Poachers Camp ( when coming from ML ) then proceed through the ice to the High Blind and then towards Spence, you just need some practice at the region and it's a breeze to navigate. Also, you can kinda guess where the ice is weak, it has a deep blue tinge that's hard to miss, the more solid ice is usually white'ish and some places you can safely sprint through the weak ice, just make sure you're not exceeding five seconds when the ice starts creaking and you're good, always aim for a nearby snowbank or fallen tree. You did really well, this was a pretty solid run. Forging is usually the tipping point in a loper run, you're on the verge of conquering this difficulty, keep on going!

Yep, huge fan of quartering as well. I only use it for moose and bears though, fastest way to the guts and pelts. Wasn't aware of the cancel and resume thing with it, will definetely use it from now on. Thanks for the tip!

For maple, check four spots at ML: Under the train bridge on the other side of the river bank there's usually a maple spawn, if that's not there, go across the dam to winding river and check the overlook with a deer carcass, directly in front of the warm cave at winding river, usually saplings there. If there are no maple here either, you can check near signal hill at PV or retreat back to trappers and check on the valley between trapper's and unnamed pond and if there's no maple here either you can go past the cabin by unnamed pont and check the hills behind the cabin for another maple spawn. There still another maple spawn point at the clearcut opposite the trailers but that's a really wolf prone area, so avoid that one.

Hum, then your data might be more accurate than mine, I'll concede. The only difference is that loper has custom loot tables that take out many first necessity tools and place them in static spawn locations, that might suggest there are different mechanics involved than the other game modes. My experience with this is mostly empirical, though I'll admit I barely played any other difficulty other than loper since I've started playing ( TWM update, late 2015 ). I have another well lived character that still has to loot BI, I might just document the stuff that he finds and see if it differs from a fresh new spawned character.

Interesting, may I ask when exactly were these tests done? Loot decay has been changed since, it really used to be that decay was started when you first entered a zone, not the case since pretty much 2 years ago. My 550 day interloper has found no food in containers at Bleak Inlet, anedoctal, but falls more in line with the curent state of the game I'd say. Granted, I did not loot the region entirely, yet.

Loot condition is random and recalculated from the game clock, meaning it doesn't matter if you first entered a region at day 200, the loot will degrade to day 200 according to game difficulty. Game difficulty affect decay rate greatly(Stalker has the base decay rate, items degrade 80% as fast on Voyageur, 25% as fast in Pilgrim and 200% as fast in Loper), so if you take too much time to explore other regions, is nearly guaranteed you won't find much food in containers since it'll have rotten away and vanished, you'll find loose food items though. In regards to the OP, I do a lot of these myself, there's nothing wrong in playing the game the way you want to play. If anything, it makes the experience a lot more personal and enjoyable when you can roleplay a bit and impose your own limitations or rules to the game. My pet peeve is to use a fire to it's fullest, I always leave perfectly aligned bottles of water...everywhere. I'll also always take advantage of a maglens fire opportunity, even if I only boil a few liters of water. A free fire is a free fire, or so they say!

Yep, all of the above are very much true and there's also a match saving feature: If you miss and the flare shell is not stuck on the bear, you can light up a torch from the lit flare on the ground! #TeamMatches Also, on Stalker and lower difficulties, you can get more flare shells by beachcombing. Look it up, it's an amazing feature and helps the orange gun's longevity in game. Cheers!

I beg to differ, the hacksaw does everything a knife does except crafting. The improvised knife is not particularly good at struggle defence and the only true advantage it has is to enable quartering, which the hacksaw can't do. @Makex is trying to get his footing at playing 'loper, moving about and making the trips actually count towards game progress is paramount. Getting the bow is a game changer in the sense that you can get pelts for the high level clothing and you can defend yourself from the #1 killer, wolves. I agree with Serenity that the dam is awesome as an early game base, you get tons of carcasses for getting ahead on your pants and boots, there's rabbits galore in the ravine, there's guaranteed birch at the ravine and potential maple under the train bridge nearby the dam. You get a flare gun by the ravine which you can use to put down two bears at ML and set their skins to cure, so you can get really awesome clothing and be way ahead of the cold curve in loper ( gets colder every day for 50 days, then it gets stable ). There's plenty of stuff to do before forging, and I'll maintain that the knife in itself is of little use ( other than quartering ) without the materials needed for crafting a bow. Carter is also a transition zone, if I already got maple, birch and pelts curing and secured a bedroll, I'll go loot PV and summit TWM for that clothing boost ( and firestriker ), then come down and go to the forge at FM for forging and crafting. Finally, you really don't need to craft a ton of arrowheads and multiple tools, I'll usually aim for 10 arrowheads and a knife, then hatchet and more arrowheads if there's enough scrap. I won't even bother sawing the shelves at Spence , there's plenty of scrap in the dam and at the trailer closer to the train bridge. Also, if you play as a nomad you'll get tons of opportunities to forge as you loot the regions ( BR has a forge as well, remember ). Cheers and happy new year!

Desolation Point is seen by many as the safer forge but in reality it's not. You have to go through the wolf gauntlet at Crumbling Highway to get there, meaning evading 2 to 3 wolves to get to the old island connector. Not fun. Getting there, you'll have little to no food, so forge away and go back home to DP if you don't have cured guts and saplings to make a bow. Forging and crafting by DP may give you cabin fever. Forlorn has weak ice, a cold and open to the elements forge and plenty of dangers to deal with but man it has food! Cattails galore, you'll never run out of food forging in FM, but you might run out of fuel. Cabin fever is never a problem here, Spence's ruined barn is considered an outside location. But seriously, find maple. Little point in forging if you can't make a bow. The bow makes you virtually invunerable and enables you to feed yourself forever, if you're a decent shot. Good luck!

I suggest you try doing the day one summit in Interloper. It's really not that hard, you just need to know your way around the map and a few tricks. Spoilers

This just took place in my game. Was just kicking about at CH when it's sunny, windless and the three deer near the fishing camp have respawned. I set out and put down all three of them in close proximity. I recover my arrows and proceed to fully harvest the first one when the weather suddenly turns sour. Retreat back to the cabin and sleep, the next day there are crows circulating one empty spot on the ice, I mapped the place and a single carcass show up on the zoomed map, but it's sunk into the ice and I can't get to it. The other deer somehow vanished without a trace. I've tried loading and reloading the game multiple times and even turning my PC completely off to see if it offsets this behaviour but sadly no buck for me. I've had wolf corpses getting buried under the snow but this is the first time deer glitches through the ice in my saves. The only apparent "fix" is to fully process the carcasses and not load/reload or leave the scene that you made your kill. Pretty hard when there's a snowstorm coming in. 😒

Hahahahahah thank you for sharing that video! Took them three minutes to figure out you're supposed to pick up the phone before dialing, that was absolutely hilarious.

Yep, got to play the game a fair bit lately, and go to grips with some of the changes to wildlife behaviour and pathing, some are marked improvements like this one(close the damn door peeps! ), and others are questionable at best, when it comes to the quality of the gaming experience. The wolves attacking you through fires has a valid objective behind it, but it kinda screws up with camping underneath the open sky, which was one of the activities I used to like the most in this game. Perhaps make them scared of already established fires or define a minimal temperature/duration that has a deterrent effect on wildlife. I'd wager a single wolf would not be scared of a little campfire but would cower at the sight of huge and hot bonfire. This one needs some rebalancing, which I know Hinterland will do given time. Also not a fan of the wolves turning when you bait them and point the cursor ( not even drawing a bow!), but I guess this one is universally hated in the community so no point in going on about it. I loved the new region and I appreciate all the hard work and effort that went into improving many of the game mechanics, but I can't help but feel that Hinterland stretched itself thin a bit with this update. I'm one of the Interlopers who just can't die regularly and I continue to do so, since the wolves are just more annoying(gotta carry 10 extra arrowheads on ya from now on) but not necessarily more dangerous if you know what you're doing. I was expecting they tweaked stuff that actually forces you into bad decisions, like making interior temps vary along outside temps, so you got have a fire inside to stay alive in blizzards, or send monster blizzards that lasted weeks to test you ability in keeping a steady emergency supply. Or fixing eating ruined meat with no consequences, etc.. All of these take time to find the right balance and I feel like the game got so much harder for the new player and just more annoying to the 1%'ers. Thank God we still have the time capsules, so I recommended my brother who plays TLD occasionally to keep his game at the Vigilant Flame version. Otherwise he'll just get trounced by the wolves and that's no fun. But I digress, I guess the game will be tuned in time and I'll be able to come back to it again when the itch to freeze returns Hahah! Cheers everybody, and please close the doors on whichever hovel you're hunkering down.

Merry Christmas everyone!

* tips hat Welcome back, old legend. Playing and writing skills as sharp as ever, I can't play the game for the next two weeks so I'll live this challenge vicariously through you, good sir! Keep 'em coming!

Admins, please delete thread. Found the bedroll, now I feel silly. 🤣