ajb1978

...how did you have 5 pain afflictions when you can only sprain 4 things?

There's also some lockers in that outdoor safe spot with the fire barrel and makeshift bed, near the initial rope climb.

7 hours ago, jeffpeng said:

Well you could argue that the sun is fine. Just the maps we draw aren't aligned to north and the transitions are .... longer than we think they are, and aren't quite straight.

I could accept that to be the case for say Pleasant Valley or Timberwolf Mountain...maybe they're just canted at the wrong angle.  But Mystery lake throws that completely out the window by being 180 degrees out of whack.  

6 hours ago, Tactical Ex said:

this does not seem like a prohibitively costly technical fix

I accept that it might not seem like that to you, given that you weren't in any way involved with the game's development.  However I submit that if it were a simple fix, given the level of support this game has received over the years, if this were a simple fix wouldn't you think this would have already been implemented?

Well unless they update the sun's path in every region, this wouldn't be reliable anyway.  Comparing the sun as it tracks across the sky with clues provided by the geography, we have an impossible situation on Great Bear.  Let's start in Forlorn Muskeg, at the crack of dawn.  Let the sun get just over the horizon, and you can see that it is correctly rising in the east.  Follow the tracks east towards the sun and transition to Mystery Lake.  Now you would expect the sun to still be straight ahead of you when you enter Mystery Lake, but it's nowhere to be seen.  Walk "east" along the tracks a ways, then turn around.  If you've gotten far enough away from the cliff face, you will see the sun, magically rising in the west.  Should you pass some time, you will see the sun track across the sky, eventually setting in the east.  And Pleasant Valley is a whole different beast, with the sun rising in the north and setting in the south.

Unlike in real life, you cannot trust the sun for navigation.

Nice!  How far could you hypothetically explore that scene?  I'm assuming none of the doors and such were interactive.

2 hours ago, jeffpeng said:

Time travel.

i.e. save scumming.

I guess I didn't think Astrid was carrying the survivor on her back.  I viewed it more like she pulls their arm across her shoulders and helps them stand, and they're at least partially supporting their own weight.  Because yeah trying to do a fireman carry for several miles would be exhausting even if you're in the best of shape.  Astrid looks like she  exercises, but is definitely not a bodybuilder.  That's one of those details that I think is glossed over, because doing something like forcing the player to take frequent breaks doesn't add enjoyment to the game, it just makes it take longer.  "More realistic" is not automatically "better".  Similar to how with food, we only have to worry about calories.  We don't have to micromanage our vitamins or anything, because that would not be fun.  Just more work.

Frankly I think this would be an awesome addition to the game, especially if it were a multi-stage thing.  It's been mentioned a few times in the past here and on Steam but with the introduction of Bleak Inlet I think the time is perfect for this.   For example you first have to craft arrowheads at a forge, then bring those arrowheads to Bleak Inlet and use the milling machine to upgrade the arrowheads into broadhead arrow tips.  Which can then be used to make broadhead arrows at a work bench, that do more damage compared to simple arrows.

Out of curiosity, have you done a lot of breakdowns in your game?  My "destroy everything" run has some pretty brutal load times when entering a region or structure that I've done a lot of breakdowns on.  Most notably Carter Dam, where there is a LOT of stuff you can destroy.  I don't think it's the save time that takes forever, I think it's actually the load time for that area.  The game basically loads the dam in its initial configuration, then replays every breakdown I've done in rapid succession, which causes the loading of the region to take several seconds.  Even with a SSD the dam takes about 5 seconds to load.  Probably be closer to 30-40 on a conventional hard drive.

Yeah, when I went to earn the master trapper badge, I set up something like 30 snares due south of the Pleasant Valley farmstead, in that little rabbit grove near Molly's barn.  I was getting just ridiculous amounts of rabbits that way, like sometimes 10+ in one day.  (Edit: And to clarify, this was every day for a couple weeks straight.  The rabbit grove never ran out.)  To try and accrue that many via active hunting would require some pretty excellent stone throwing skills, as well as traveling to multiple rabbit groves in one day.

Basically if you just need one or two rabbits for their hide or gut, hunting is the way to go.  You can get what you need lickety-split.  If on the other hand you're farming rabbits for food, then set up a nice big snare line, and you'll be rolling in rabbit meat.

On 1/6/2020 at 12:55 AM, aspiranten said:

I cant edit my own post?

You can if you get to it soon.  The ability to edit ends after a certain amount of time.  I'm not sure how long exactly but it's at least an hour, less than a day.

North America?  Have you ever experienced winter conditions similar to what you see in The Long Dark?  If so, what's your worst "I'm so cold I might actually die" horror story. If not...how do you realistically think you'd fare in such a scenario?

</conversationstarter>

I'm an idiot.  If you saw my previous comment, disregard.  This time of night, after working a 12 hour day and drinking three fingers of scotch, my brain ain't operating at full throttle.

You only begin to lose condition from exhaustion after 1 full hour with your fatigue sub-condition at zero.  So if you have a single cup of coffee, you can esc-cancel after drinking about a quarter of a cup, pass an hour of time, drink another quarter cup, pass an hour, and repeat.  This will allow you to pass about 4 hours at zero fatigue with zero condition loss, off one cup of coffee.  If you time it right.

Also, the 1% restored condition for 2 hours that birch bark tea grants you applies even if you are exhausted.  This means 1 cup of birch bark tea will negate 2 hours of condition damage due to exhaustion.  If you have sufficient quantities of birch bark tea and coffee, you can survive many days in a row without rest.

42 minutes ago, jeffpeng said:

Sure. I can't jump, but wolves can. Fair game. Literally and figuratively.

3 hours ago, aspiranten said:

Throwing and picking up like that didnt occur to me ajb. Nice tip. Though my aim is nowhere near that level.

No problem.  And for the record, red flares work as well, but are far less effective.   Blue flares are great because they act like a circle of protection, preventing timberwolves from getting within a certain distance of you as long as you hold a lit one.  They just kind of stop at the edge of the circle and growl, giving you time to line up a perfect throw.  Just get the wolf dead-center on your monitor, and throw.  And then scramble to pick it up ASAP because the wolves don't care about the flare once it's on the ground.

1 minute ago, piddy3825 said:

where did you find all the carrots to be able to see this well in the dark?  Damn son, you got good eyesight!

Lol once the sun icon is fully above the horizon in that little time-of-day indicator, it goes from pitch black to sort of shades of blue.  I think my survivor must be a half-drow or something.

Incidentally I got an aurora 18 game-hours after taking that screen shot, and was able to escape the lower mine with all of the harvested reclaimed wood and scrap metal, and about 98% of the provisions I;d brought down there.  Yeah...I overprepared.

Word of advice to anyone that wants to try exploring the lower mines: There are two fire barrels down there, and a good amount of reclaimed wood to be scavenged.  Save your coffee and birch bark tea for condition recovery in the event you aren't as lucky with your rescue aurora as I was and have to power through remaining conscious due to cabin fever.  You can get drinking water from those fire barrels, and save your coffee/tea to recover condition lost due to exhaustion.  That was my plan as well, but apparently RNGesus smiled at my preparedness and let me off the hook easy.

Should you get trapped in the lower Cinder Hills Coal Mine after the aurora ends, as the day rolls on the cave is surprisingly well lit.  Also, the water remains electrified even at high noon.  On the bright side, you can use this light to saw down shelves without having to use lamp oil.  At this rate, I think I massively overprepared for this expedition.  I've already broken down all the shelves and crates down there, and I've got enough coffee and birch bark tea that I should be able to survive over two weeks without sleep if cabin fever hits.

This is normal. When you drop below 10% condition you start to lose control over your character, stumbling and staggering.  The closer to 0% you are, the more profound the staggering is.

Edit: To clarify this is not a bug, this is the result of you being very near death.  You're barely hanging on, and can't even walk properly.

Actually that's not a bad idea for Story mode.  I honestly don't see any practical functionality for this in Survivor mode.  But say in Story mode you need to read some old microfiche film or something to advance the plot, and need to find a mag lens in order to make out the text.

The storm lantern's condition doesn't affect its operation in any way.  As for whether to use a torch or storm lantern...well I guess that depends on what you have more of.  A crafted torch costs 1 cloth, however it only costs .10L of lamp oil.  In turn it burns for about an hour and a half.  Compared to the storm lantern that burns exactly 4 hours on 1L of lamp oil.  This means if you need to stretch your lamp oil to its maximum potential, torches are the way to go.  1L of lamp oil will provide 15 hours of light via torches, and only 4 via storm lantern.

That said, lamp oil is far more renewable than cloth, torches require a separate source of ignition, and can be blown out in high winds.  So I will always prefer the lantern.

4 minutes ago, piddy3825 said:

The gun rack over the fireplace won't store the rifle  on it, but you can break it down. 

That's a bug.  It also affects the gun racks at Paradise Meadows, so I kinda think it's every gun rack in the game.

21 hours ago, aspiranten said:

Flares does ZERO impact on morale meter.

Yeah I dunno seems pretty effective to me.