ajb1978

If it's an area you simply cannot get to or look in, such as the top drawer of a filing cabinet, then there isn't anything stored in there. They are rather devious with their hiding spots for some items, but they don't sadistically place items in unreachable locations. There's always a way. (With the exception of beachcombing items spawning below the terrain and being forever unobtainable...that's not intentional though, and I don't know if that's even still a thing.) On the other hand, sometimes it is necessary to break down objects in order to loot certain containers. Hibernia is a good example, where there's a backpack that you can only get to if you bust up a wall of crates. Occasionally if you break open a crate, you will find some items on the ground. (They aren't "in" the crate, they're on the ground underneath the crate, but since you can't get the items until the crate is gone the effect is the same.)

Colds aren't caused by being cold, they're caused by being infected with something like rhinovirus. While this virus is quite communicable, it requires contact with people who are carriers. It's possible to become infected by way of contact with an infected surface, but realistically if there aren't a lot of people around, your odds of contracting a virus are pretty slim.

Random start, but I always end up doing one of two things. Loot the world and haul it to one place to retire, or establish a fortified base in every region.

I wouldn't mind a simple "CLIMB OUT" button mash that would help reduce the effects of falling through ice. Maybe reducing the amount of immediate condition damage you suffer as a result of falling through if you climb out quickly, but the difficulty of the mash is impacted by how much weight you're carrying.

Well...my current custom game is at 100% with 252 locations. So until they add new regions or locations to explore, I guess that's the number to shoot for.

After all antibiotics and reishi mushrooms have been used up (you would need to be careless to the point of deliberately self-abusive for that to happen) there is no way to get any more. Everything else is available via beachcombing in some fashion. Old Man's Beard, Painkillers, birch and maple saplings, cat tails stalks and heads, etc. You can even find cloth and small scraps of clothing washed up, enabling you to craft more bandages from that. Although I can't even begin to imagine how long you'd have to play before you faced depletion of resources. I have one game where I broke down everything...EVERYTHING..in every region. I had over 1000 cloth total when I was done, and that's not even including all the hoarded articles of unused clothing I could also break down. I haven't had a wolf struggle in over 100 days. So using that as a ballpark, say every 200 days I need 1 cloth worth of bandages...at that rate it would take well over 500 YEARS before I ran out of cloth to craft bandages. Don't worry about running out. You won't!

I watched a vid on YouTube recently where a real survivalist played The Long Dark. He spawned in Pleasant Valley and found the hay bales, and was commenting that if he were in that situation, he would crawl inside one of those hay bales to warm up. I personally have had the thought "Why can't I just rip off a fistful of hay and call it a tinder plug?" Edit: Also, "Why can't I just set fire to this entire bale? That would warm me up." I guess I don't feel too strongly on the subject myself, but there is a logic to it. The hay bales do appear to be a potential resource that is currently underutilized. They serve to block the wind and that's it.

Likewise. Proof that it's possible to disagree on the Internet, and have a rational discussion that doesn't devolve into yo momma jokes. And on that note, yo momma so stupid it takes her 2 hours to watch 60 minutes.

On that we are in agreement! My whole thesis on the subject is that because the UI "tricks" users into eating raw meat, it's incumbent on the UI to address the issue. I don't like the pop up window. I would have preferred raw meat to simply not populate as an edible choice in the radial UI. Bam, no interrupt, accidental raw meat gorging: solved. But I mean whatevs. It works. And the EXTREME paranoia around raw meat did serve to enforce extreme vigilance around meat. So I actually trained myself to stop eating raw meat well before the confirmation screen was added. But the frustration of going to place raw meat on a campfire, and AH CRAP I'M EATING IT, QUICK ESC CANCEL! Whew...no food poisoning....well crap I should have just finished the piece then, huh? Lol I'm glad it was ultimately addressed, even if it wasn't in the fashion I'd have preferred.

I'm normally not either, but again, raw meat is a unique case! I'm cooking bacon on the Foreman right now. I guarantee you the chance of me accidentally eating a piece of raw bacon is 0% lol

I hear ya, but raw meat is in a class of its own. Falling asleep and freezing to death...that happens. Stumbling into a campfire, that happens too. Falling, twisting your ankle, yup. Bumping the trigger and shooting a gun by accident, yeah, that happens. Same with releasing an arrow by mistake. Eating a candy bar of questionable quality and getting sick, sure. Even accidentally drinking unboiled water--it's not like it would look any different. All of these things have an element of "Yeah, I can see how that would happen if you're careless..." But raw meat vs cooked, there is absolutely no way you can make that mistake, even if you're a total klutz. Maaaaybe you make the mistake of biting raw meat in the dark if you're careless, but you would immediately know from the texture and taste, and wouldn't continue to eat.

I'm 80% in favor of it. Context is key--the game's interface was getting in the way after the Vigilant Flame update. When cooking, you open radial, left-click the food, right-click raw meat, left-click to place. When placing a pot or can, it's left-click to open the menu, left-click to select the item, left-click to place. The left/right/left vs left/left/left was causing people to accidentally eat raw meat, and that is just absurd. No one is going to accidentally eat raw meat. The thought of someone getting ready to cook a steak, then accidentally shoving the whole raw hunk into their mouth, chewing, and swallowing is laughably absurd. Which why in this specific case, the hand-holding is warranted. The 20% that's not in favor of it, is that I don't like this specific implementation. It gets the job done sure, but the dialogue box kind of destroys the immersion. I personally would have preferred raw meat to not show up in the radial at all. If you want to eat raw meat, you do it deliberately, from the inventory. I've never accidentally eaten something out of my inventory.

?? There is a message. If you try to eat raw meat, it says "Eating this raw item could make you sick. Continue?" and then you have two buttons, Confirm, and Back.

Clipping through the ground is rare, but does happen. I've never known it to be repeatable on demand though. If you can use F8 to grab a screenshot, so your coordinates are displayed on the screen (preferably AS you are falling), that can help when filing a bug report. The game has a built-in failsafe to where if you freefall for like 5-10 seconds or somewhere in there (a thing that can't happen unless you clip through the ground and fall into oblivion) you are automatically teleported to a specific location in that area. That second one doesn't sound like anything I've seen before. Although in that same cave one time, randomly the cave simply didn't render graphically. I turned a corner, and this whole section of cave was just a featureless void, and I could see on the other end of the void where the cave continued. I turned around, turned back, and everything was normal. Really wish I'd grabbed a screenshot but it all happened so fast.

I usually find rifle ammo in there. And I think maybe a flare, if memory serves, but I'm not 100% on that. Rifle ammo for sure though.

Wear a leather belt, even if you don't need it to hold your pants up. A leather belt has numerous uses. It can be used to bind firewood together for easy carrying, an emergency tourniquet, as a strop to keep a knife edge keen, a lifeline, wrap it around your hand if you need to handle hot/burning objects, a makeshift sling for an injured arm, etc. In an active shooter situation, if you're behind a door with one of those hydraulics door closers, you can wrap your belt around the arm joint, effectively locking the door by preventing that arm from actuating.

Rather than a nudge button (people would absolutely abuse it to try and get into "off limits" areas), a key that triggers the "Fell through the ground" failsafe teleport. Hold this key down for 20 seconds, it teleports you to a predefined spot on the map. That could also hypothetically be abused, but the potential for abuse is far less if you have to hold the button for 20 seconds, and it always whisks you to the same spot.

Four things will trigger a survivor mode save. Sleeping, passing time and not Esc-canceling early, suffering an affliction (blood loss, sprain, etc), and entering an interior location. So if you get stuck on terrain and suffer a sprain while trying to get free...you're stuck. It sucks when it happens, no doubt about it. But every surivivor game ends sometime, from something. You had a good run. Your next will be even more successful. And you can fire the revolver in melee, you just have to struggle to build up the bar first, then you are presented the option to click RMB to take a shot, or you can continue to mash LMB to go for a blunt force scare. Personally I prefer to use the hatchet for wolf struggles. It ends the struggle pretty quickly, and inflicts a bleeding wound that will eventually fatal to the wolf. The key to being successful early on is knowing what constitutes a problem, and what constitutes an annoyance. Freezing for an hour is an annoyance. (20% condition loss, hypthermia risk.) Freezing for 4 hours is a serious problem. (80% condition loss, full blown hypothermia). Starving only hurts you 1% condition per hour, so you can go a couple days without food provided nothing else is in the red. Thirst hurts worse at 2% per hour, but survivable short term. Exhaustion also damages you at 1% per hour. So you can power through a few red sub-conditions if you know what you're doing. Yes, keeping everything topped off is preferred, but if all you have is a couple candy bars, starve all day and save them for right before bed.

I encourage you to find your own play style, but since you asked... Voyageur, you can afford to be patient and play a long term strategy. Don't hunt, fish, or even bother harvesting edible plants unless you are desperate. And by desperate I mean, you've already been starving for a full day. You can soak up a bit of condition loss due to thirst and hunger if you just keep moving. Remember that with a 12 hour rest plus a cup of herbal tea before bed, you will recover up to 102% condition. So don't be afraid to do a little strategic starvation now and then. Pick a spot to call "home" on each map, and make a point to wander around the map, gathering supplies from the various interior locations, and cutting down saplings, then hauling them back to your home base. Don't spend time crafting or repairing your clothing just yet, just trade up as you find better stuff, leaving your old stuff at home to deal with later. You may need to boil some water on some maps, but you will find plenty of food just laying around to get you by. Once you're confident you've got one map cleared, move on to a new location wearing your best clothes but otherwise traveling light, then repeat the process. Find a place to call home, investigate each location on the map, haul the stuff back to your new home, trade up clothing. Just keep moving on...and on..and on...and eventually you will have a fortified safehouse in each location. Once you've gotten the whole world sorted out, such that each region has one well-stocked safehouse, go back to the region you started in. Now your saplings will be cured, and you will have at least one rifle and revolver, and several rounds for each. As for wolf management, if they aren't in a full on attack charge, you can simply walk away. Break line of sight, and you can sprint out of their detection range, and you're free. Otherwise, you can do something else to break pathing, such as walk off the edge of a cliff. Or enter a vehicle or building if the option presents itself, then wait for the wolf to wander way. Lit flares thrown into the path of a wolf can scare them off, as can a thrown stone that strikes them (whether a direct it or if it ricochets into them). Just remember that if you use RMB to aim, the wolf immediately goes into an attack charge, so try to hip-fire those stones. The revolver is a great wolf management tool, and the flare pistol is an instant scare for anything, even a charging bear. Stones are particularly handy if you see the wolf before it sees you. Toss the stone, it will create a noise where it lands, and the wolf will go to investigate. This can be used to get a wolf out of your way before you sneak past.

If you're going to be there a while, maybe try using the cure-in-place method to hang some hides on the walls. Makes for good decoration.

I'm 82.71% sure that only pertains to wildlife detecting/smelling the player. I have noticed wolves seem to detect rabbits, deer, and bears normally even if you tweak these detection ranges in a custom game.

Long range direct hit with the flare gun..and I think it's specifically a long range critical hit, since I've had direct hits that inflict a bleeding injury, but the flare drops to the ground instead of getting stuck in the animal. The flare gun is a guaranteed scare even if you miss. On a normal direct hit, it inflicts a bleeding injury that--moose notwithstanding--is eventually fatal. A point blank critical hit on a wolf is an instant kill. (I've never insta-killed anything other than a wolf with the flare gun so I don't know if it can't be done, or if I'm just not lucky.) A long range critical hit the flare gets stuck in the animal and allows you to kind of easily keep tabs on it as it runs around. It's actually pretty difficult to accomplish with a wolf, since they present such a small target at range, and the flare gun fires at an arc necessitating that you aim the flare gun in a way that it blocks your view of the very thing you're trying to hit.

Thanks for posting your results! Hopefully this will spare someone a headache in the future.

Actually the bed of pine needles was added with the launch of Wintermute, so depending on when you first started playing the bed may not have existed yet.

I believe items in your pack only take damage if you lose the struggle but survive anyway. The revolver does degrade if you use it as a bludgeoning weapon, and while I don't have a whole lot of data to back this up, I think it degrades at about 1/2 the rate it would if you fired it normally. I'm not 100% certain of any of this, but it's my best guess based on what I've seen.