ajb1978

Yeah this quest is heavily dependent on RNG.  I've managed to catch the guy after fishing for just a few hours on one playthrough, while on another I had to reload the save multiple times, and spending over 24 hours out on the ice during each attempt.  Quicksave and load is your friend here.

Honestly depending on how long the body had been frozen, decomp might not be an issue anymore.  As water crystals expand due to freezing, they rupture the cell walls of animal tissue.  I mean I'm no forensic pathologist, but I would think all the bacteria in and on that corpse to be long dead by now.

When I was about 11, I tripped over something, stuck out my hands to soften the impact, and hyperextended the wrist.  I could barely move that wrist for a couple weeks.  So spraining a wrist while walking on a slope does make pretty good sense if you figure they lost their footing and landed on their hands wrong.

Just now, Tohono O'odham Man said:

And why doesn't hinterland respond to my question? 

Like I said...that kind of attitude is not likely to win you any friends.  Including them.

21 hours ago, Tohono O'odham Man said:

Apparently everyone has something to say but nothing useful. 

So people who disagree with you have nothing useful to say?  That's not going to win you any friends around here, just FYI.

34 minutes ago, ManicManiac said:

It's silly, I know... but it does bother me a little bit, but it seems the orientation of the maps doesn't jive with the movement of the sun and the alignment of the cardinal directions (in relation to each region and the overall world map). 

Yeah I'd imagine that could be problematic for new players who would think (and rightly so) that they can use the sun for navigation.  Part of the problem is the regions aren't even oriented the same way with respect to the world as they were in the past.  For instance comparing that color map of Great Bear Island with the world map we have in-game today, using the river and Crystal Lake as our reference point, Timberwolf Mountain was rotated about 100 degrees counterclockwise.  Assuming the sun was a perfect east-west before, now suddenly the sun tracks north/south.

So....you couldn't find the time to play two hours a day for four days, but somehow would be able to play two hours a day for 13?  I'm not trying to be snarky I just don't get the logic behind how adding more days makes it less likely you'll miss something.  Frankly as an adult with a successful professional career of my own, I thought four days was fine.  13 would have been very difficult to participate in, because that's nearly two weeks of dedicating 2 hours a day to ensure I complete the challenge.

34 minutes ago, MarrowStone said:

@ajb1978, Is loot a variable in detection range that you know of? Most likely candidates: firewood, water, and storm lanterns. 

I've not noticed any effect on detection range.  It does contribute to the background noise of you walking around, but that's just an aesthetic thing.  Carry a bunch of water, you hear sloshing.  Carry a bunch of metal, you hear a bunch of clanking.  But none of it affects detection.

I got dehydration just looking at that image.

The world map has definitely changed over time.  Really the only solid clues we have as to the location and orientation of the regional maps are the waterways represented on the world map.  That's why on my version, some of the regions don't directly touch.  Like the gap between FM and ML--when I resized the maps such that the lakes and rivers were the same size and shape as the ones on the world map, those regions don't touch.  If they redraw the world map at some point, that would give a lot of flexibility on how the regions are laid out.

I feel like we're a bunch of frontiersmen gathering around a campfire trying to sort out what our maps say, vs. what the local legends say.

1 hour ago, Ice Hole said:

This technique offers a realistic approach but in the end it turns into a mini game of looTetris.

And it did indeed.  I recall more than one instance where I'd find some super valuable dagger that I just had to have, and then it's like...crap.. Ok so if I move the armor over here, shuffle the shield here...maybe I can drop these arrows then equip that other stack..now I can move the rubies into that slot...may as well drink that potion...Ok now if we move the swords....

1 hour ago, Ice Hole said:

No not really, this is like putting a cake on a stand.

The better choice would have been inside the car.

Hah well yeah if we're speaking of realism sure.  I'm thinking more in terms of in-game physics.  Like those magic safety logs you stand on to hunt bears from.

43 minutes ago, turtle777 said:

I don't think that fits the narrative.

Well it doesn't.  The point of contention is that the narrative doesn't fit the geography, unless the narrative has changed.  Which I suppose it might have...Predux Jeremiah described Perseverance Mills as a "shit nothing town a few hours north", but the Coastal Highway is to the southeast.  And looking at how far away from Pleasant Valley Milton is, you could fit two additional regions in there easy.  That's just not plausible that Molly would have walked THAT far in search of deer to hunt.

The narrative is that Astrid made it just past the collapsed tunnel, passed out on the other side, and was found by Molly.  But geographically, that just doesn't fit.  

27 minutes ago, ThePancakeLady said:

I really, really have to stop obsessively grabbing sticks.

I learned my lesson about 2 years ago, when I realized the main reason my game was CTD every third transition, was because I had over 2000 sticks in my safehouse!

Nicely done!  I'd also tried to do this in the past, using the rivers and lakes as guidelines to orient and resize the regional maps, to correspond to the world one.  We pretty much came to the same general conclusions.  The way the world is shaped, I would expect Perseverance Mills to be in the gap between MT and PV...but Astrid somehow managed to traverse that entire region without encountering the town.  So I'm wondering how that's going to end up in the game.

Edit: Without starting any fires, your main killer is going to be thirst.  You can power through food poisoning from raw meat, but even acquiring unpotable water requires a fire.  I'd put your max survival time at maybe 30 days, as a best case scenario.

The cutoff is 10kg over your encumbered point.  So baseline, it's 40kg.  With a satchel and well fed buff, it's 50kg.  You get diminishing returns on sprinting pretty quickly, so using baseline as an example carrying 31kg your sprint is still pretty effective, but 39kg you won't see any appreciable increase in speed.

When you are carrying more than your limit, you do get an increased risk for sprains.  The baseline is 30kg.  If you carry 31kg, you get the red weight icon in the corner, and you pick up a "sprain risk" affliction.  A more advanced encumbrance system that factors in volume as well as mass would, as I understand it, be quite an undertaking because the current inventory system has roots that run pretty deep.

That said, as a thought exercise I have seen other games handle both weight and bulk simultaneously, and did a great job at it.  Neverwinter Nights for instance, portrayed your inventory like a grid.  Items had weight, but they also took up one or more squares on the grid.  So items could be small and heavy, or light and bulky. And of course small and light, or bulky and heavy.  This also meant certain containers could have certain grid orientations, further limiting the items that could be stored in there.  For instance a desk drawer might be a single row of boxes, meaning you could stuff things in there like rings, arrows, or daggers...but never a shield.   You could carry over your weight limit and it would slow you down, but you could never exceed your physical capacity to store items.  Which again, makes perfect sense.  If I can comfortably carry 30kg, uncomfortably carry up to 60, that's one thing.  But I cannot ever carry 30kg worth of styrofoam, because the sheer volume is impossible to handle.

In all seriousness, I wonder if this would be an effective way to keep a crash survivor safe if Timberwolves are about.  I think the wolf attacks are scripted to occur in specific areas though, and I don't recall if any of those areas were near a car.

10 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

@ajb1978
Sir, you are a champion.  Well done.

Thanks! I failed to eat them all though.  It is REALLY hard to burn 18000 calories when you only have like two hours left. 

OK so I've officially completed 4DON this year, but I'm still finishing my day 4 exploration.  While I was out there exploring in the blizzard, I found a 6th Pleasant Valley pumpkin cache!  That's right--SIXTH!  This one was up by the rope climb just out back of signal hill.  (Not bothering to enclose it in a spoiler tag because the event is basically over.)

I also have 4 pumpkin pies so far...still have the rest of PV and then CH to explore.

Edit: After exploring the rest of Pleasant Valley and the Coastal Highway, I have a grand total of 9 pies!

I intend to eat them all.  Simply because I can.

33 minutes ago, FluffyComeHome said:

 I also like the fact that it only shows the area where you are and not your position in relation to what is mapped. 

Actually the map comes up centered on your position.  In Survivor mode it doesn't have an icon indicating where exactly you are, but you know it's smack dab in the middle of the screen (at least until you scroll the map or zoom all the way out) so you have a pretty good idea of where you are.

Frankly I think it'd be neat if each soda had different properties. Maybe orange recovers more thirst, grape recovers more calories, but summit soda is caffeinated but is actually diet and so recovers thirst and fatigue only. 

I agree with the "it is easy for veteran players, but not everyone is a veteran, and the event is supposed to cater to everyone" philosophy. It's a fun diversion not a challenge mode. 

Maybe in 2020 4DON will also support difficulty modes, like story mode. 

Also, flashlights can be a great source of ambient lighting.  Light one, drop it while it's lit, then RMB to position it somewhere and you have a custom floodlight for as long as the battery lasts.

My post-rampage epilogue: I dumped all weapons at the camp office and headed out with some extra food and water.  I dodged the few wolves I encountered in MT and am now holed up in the Paradise Meadows farmstead.  My plan for tomorrow is simple: hunt for Pumpkin Pies, as I make my way back through the regions in the reverse order in which I conquered them, ending 2019 4DON at the Coastal Highway,  the same place I started, with as many pies as I can find.