Willy Pete

@matchstick Honestly? I'd leave the non-essentials behind as a cache, it's what I do. As to the rest, take your time and plan your trips. Find the fastest, safest route back home and stick to it. I had to do this recently with a trip from Timberwolf mountain to Pleasant valley, got a ton of gear down from the summit to the Mountaineering Hut and then to Pleasant valley in about 8 or 9 trips total.

I think arrows are fine. Wasn't around for the OG rifle sights, I'll have to look those up but I don't have a problem with them.

The best part about an exploit? You don't have to use it...

I've seen big cats mentioned before as a possible new enemy and I'd be down for some sort of enemy that tracks you down, perhaps pathing to break line of sight behind objects and only striking from behind...but this makes it a little OP, so perhaps it would need something like the crows calling warnings around bears, but more subtle. An idea I had would be once the cat is in tracking mode and within rendering distance ambient sounds start to get muted while character sounds (namely footsteps, moving, and breathing) get slowly louder. Not to a point where you'll instantly recognize it, mind you. It would be a slow change where if you're not paying attention you'll miss it entirely and it will be too late...

No, sanity as in morale. Though as mentioned above the two are not mutually exclusive.

When/if a sanity mechanic is added to the game, I think a nice feature would be accessory items, basic toiletries and whatnot that give some sort of boost to your sanity, but degrade when being carried. Some examples might be: toilet paper, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, etc. All of these would passively assist your sanity, weighing very little, but degrade over time and not be harvestable. In a real life scenario, having basic items like this can greatly help you keep sharp when times are tough. A mundane task such as brushing your teeth can do wonders for a lonely mind in a cruddy situation. What basic necessity items would you want in the apocalypse?

1. Mostly agree. If implemented there should be a way to conceal it, either via burial in the snow or something that either reduces or outright eliminates wolves or bears coming to steal food. Canines are known to bury their food for exactly this reason. Alternatively, having X number of meat stored outside makes wolves/bears change their pathing to an area around where the meat is stored. 2. Disagree. This would probably be too much of a pain to implement and doesn't really make sense in the first place. No other item disappears on its own (carcasses aren't items) and meat rotting totally to nothing would take an incredibly long time, especially in sub zero environments where microbes wouldn't be able to properly break it down. The only real reason carcasses despawn is to help declutter the world and increase performance. 3. Agree. I swear I recall the devs talking about this exact thing somewhere a while back. Something about carcass stealing. 4. Does it not? I swear I left some low condition venison in a container on one of my first playthroughs and it disappeared. In any case, rotten meat is still useful as a decoy while something like a ruined sewing kit isn't. Makes sense for the kit to disappear, but you can still get use out of ruined meat.

I'm just gonna leave this here...

I could go either way on this, mostly because the best thing about an exploit is this: you don't have to use it. If you don't like an exploit, then don't use it. I certainly don't, all my characters keep well fed whether they want to or not. The idea of an opposite to the well fed bonus is neat, but I feel the developers want to offer rewards over punishments. I also don't like it when folks say "It's not realistic" because TLD isn't a "realistic" survival game, it's what I would term a simple survival game. There's no management of waste, item storage is based on weight and not volume, sickness and wounds are beyond simplified, the list goes on and on. I'd like to see a Loper's opinion on this, I only ever play Voyager and Stalker.

I've seen the request for fire drills and other means of primitive fire-starting in the game pop up on numerous occasions for obvious reasons. Also for obvious reasons, people point out the fact that we have the magnifying glass and that TLD's base idea of limited resources doesn't work with the fire drill. I tend to agree with this line of thinking, none of my characters has ever run out of matches and has always found a magnifying glass, but I do think there might be a way for a fire drill to work with game balance. 1. Crafting: you have to craft the item "fire drill kit" from a fir firewood, two sticks, and one line (basically making it a fire bow kit, but whatever) and it weighs the combined weight of all items. This takes 15 minutes. Harvesting only gives you the firewood and a tinder plug back and takes five minutes. 2. Use: the fire drill kit has the option to "use" and this must be done indoors or when you have the sheltered icon, it requires light to use. If it's at all windy it gives the error sound and says something like: it's too windy to use this. When used, it requires a tinder item that is consumed no matter what. You burn extra calories when using the kit and each use takes about five minutes (in game) and costs 20-25% condition of the fire drill kit. If successful (a measly 20% chance) you get an item: ember. The ember stays lit for about three seconds in which you must use it as you would a match for starting a fire. If you take too long, it goes out and it is less effective than a cardboard match. 3. Skills: no skills effect the use of the fire drill kit. Firestarting has no effect and it probably wouldn't have its own secondary skill (like sharpening and repair). All in all, this would offer an incredibly ineffective way to start fires that would be theoretically infinite (so long as you can make lines), but costly and in no way, shape, or form an easy way to start fires. It also gives the ability to get rid of all those pesky tinder plugs once you get past level 3 firestarting. This is the only way I could see a fire drill kit working in the game.

So I'm not the only one, then! I shot a wolf with an arrow at point blank, it attacked me, I hit it once with my axe and it died atop me. The luckiest kill I've ever had were two critical hits on bears that were stalking me (on separate occasions). The luckiest was one right at the bottom of the Mountaineer's Hut. Bear meat for days.

@TheHunter280 Food poisoning and the like are 100% illnesses. The boost provided would decrease the likelihood of you getting sick from eating low quality food/intestinal parasites/etc as well as decrease the time it takes to get over them. On lower settings, sure, they're not that big a deal, but on higher settings these sorts of things can be far worse.

No one wants to die, and most folks die from dumb mistakes rather than running out of resources. If that's not your cup of tea, then sorry about it, but the game's not changing any time soon.

I've been drinking a lot of this stuff called Zipfizz for some time now. It's got a buttload of vitamins and a hint of caffeine and I wonder if something similar to it might fit into the world of TLD. The way it would work is similar to how water tablets work, clicking "use" on the item uses up the vitamin mix and adds X Liters/Gallons (probably something like 0.5 L) of vitamin drink to your inventory. When drunk it gives you a small amount of energy back and gives the effect: immune system boost for anywhere from 24 to 72 hours. During this time, you have a reduced chance of getting illnesses, and illnesses that you do take require only half the time to recover from. Obviously tweaking could be done for game balance and the vitamin mixes would be rare, but just a thought for a potentially powerful medical item.

These have probably been touched on before, but how about freeze-dried meats, eggs, milk, fruits/veggies? While in their dried status and kept indoors, these items last an incredibly long time (though when left outdoors, not so much). However, if eaten in their dried status they drain a significant amount of water like salty crackers. There is, however, the option to reconstitute them by sacrificing some water. For stuff like meat and eggs, this would probably mean a little bit of water loss, but not nearly as much as when they were dried. For items like milk and fruits/veggies these would give some of that water back. Freeze dried goodies are a solid choice for survival foods, I'd imagine the good people of Great Bear would partake in their share of freeze drying food.

That's the whole point of the game. No matter what you do, you will eventually die.

I really like this idea, gives me vibes from that old Hatchet novel by Gary Paulsen. I still remember a scene where the character burns his cash to keep warm.

I once leaned in towards my screen to try and look behind a shelf or something in game, didn't work for obvious reasons.

I go for armor and warmth. I can get myself down to around 50-60lbs with some of the heaviest clothing and with well fed and a moose satchel that gives me more than enough leeway for most of my endeavors. I only recently found my first pair of Expedition Parkas and that squeaky sound it makes when you walk around with it drove me insane. Screw the windproof bonus, I went back to my bearskin and moose-hide for a more rustic look. Specifically, my current Voyager loadout is as follows: Head: Balaclava and Rabbit hat (I had the cowl in place of the balaclava for the look, but looks aren't everything in Pleasant Valley) Outer Chest: Moose hide and Bearskin Inner Chest: Cowichan sweaters Hands: Rabbit mitts (though I'll probably switch to gauntlets if I ever find any) Outer Legs: Snow pants Inner Legs: Woolen long johns Socks: Climbing Feet: Mukluks Other: Moose satchel and earmuffs

I don't have a problem with the iron sights so I disagree, most engagement ranges I've run into are all iron sight friendly and adding a scope only pushes TLD one step closer to being another loot and shoot survival game like Rust. The only scope I'd be willing to give a shot is an older World War II era scope like you'd find on the L42A1, single zoom function (somewhere between 2x and 4x). It would be non-repairable, rare, and be quickly ruined in an animal attack. I do agree with the 'action required to remove scope' feature, but it would probably only take about a second or so of in-game time (5 minutes) to do like crafting birch bark tea.

An easier way would be to have a parachuting scene where the character bails out, maybe the camera starts high and lowers to your start location with the sound of the character landing. Whatever the case, I don't think it's nearly important enough to add to the game. Sometimes I want to be my own person separate from Will or Astrid.

@hozz1235Dirty minds think alike ;D

@Jimmy, I haven't. I'll check it out!

A lot of excellent insight, I even learned a thing or two! Thanks all around!