Swales

Quote: The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it? Source: Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (novel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_Eleven Submitted by Swales

Oh man, this is exciting! I'm really happy that this year's Halloween event is longer that four days, since I'm moving house at the end of October and I wasn't sure I'd have my computer/internet situation set up at the new place in time for 4DON. Now I definitely will!

I've found several so far:

When did the big lamp at the top of the lighthouse start lighting up during the aurora? I stopped playing for a little while and came back recently, got really surprised by that. I could have sworn it didn't glow before. Love the eerie way it illuminates the landscape!

I don't know why it steams, but I want to know why I can't have it. Why hang a pot so tantalizingly close to a stove if I can't put it on the stove? Is it welded to the wall? It taunts me!

After playing Aurora Night, I have decided that Supercharged Flashlight is my new best friend. I actively pursued the sparklewolves just for the fun of blasting them with the blinding power of god 🔦

I agree. The wolves may be more aggressive, but with bright lights in the sky and glowing fur, they're easier to see and avoid than Day 2. Plus a nonstop aurora is a screenshot DREAM! Really looking forward to playing this night once I get off work.

Stumbling around Pleasant Valley chainsmoking road flares and leading a little parade of growling furballs with laser pointer eyes behind me. The weather cleared for a moment atop Signal Hill and I spied a friendly glow in the field below, but the fog had rolled back in by the time I got down there and I couldn't find the pumpkin. Rats. Something weird about these wolves: do red-eyed 4DON wolves react to decoys? I couldn't drop any using the radial menu. The wolf stalking me didn't pursue a meat scrap I dropped manually. Ultimately it made little difference, I deterred all last night's wolves with fire and flares, but it struck me as odd.

A towel. Accompanied by a new survival mode starting quote: "Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with." Douglas Adams

How would I described my 2019 4DON experience? Ten thousand magnifying lenses when all you need is a knife. 😂 I failed to find a single pumpkin on Day 1, even in places I'd found pumpkins last year. Lousy luck. I'm sitting cozy in the PV farmhouse for now, plenty of food and water and a nice stack of skill books to read. I've got enough scavenged deer skins to make boots and pants and I've picked up *two* Cowichan sweaters (a first for me!). Low on wood and no coal, though. Without weapons, I fear a trek to Cinder Hills may prove fatal. Without coal, Day 4 will *definitely* prove fatal. Decisions!

Excited to play this year! My schedule was too busy last year to participate in 4DON so I'm happy this year is a repeat. If one is in-game at 11PM PST, does the day roll over to the next one immediately, or would one need to exit and reload to change to the next day?

Somebody a long time ago mentioned the possibility of a run-down old ski resort, and I love that idea. Would be very interesting to explore.

Cooked tomato soup has always had that yellowy-orange color in my games. Lots of real-life tomato soup recipes produce orange or yellow soup, but those are usually recipes with cream or butter, neither of which is present on the ingredients list for Mom's Kitchen Tomato Soup. I'd expect a tomato-forward soup like that to be more reddish-orange than yellowy-orange. Maybe a design oversight? Maybe an intentional choice to differentiate it from the deeply-red rosehip tea?

Love those free wolf pelts in HRV. I'm really enjoying this adventure log, I hope you keep it up! And good luck on the long climb back from 40% health.

I have vague memories of breaking down cardboard boxes and finding unexpected loot behind them, but I can't say for certain that it was the flattened boxes on the walls. It feels really familiar though.

The player is already prevented from reading research books while starving/sick/injured. Maybe instead of RNG accidents, impose a similar penalty on strenuous activity while starving or exhausted: no crafting or mending when you're so tired you're likely to stick yourself with a fish hook, no chopping up tree limbs and big crates when you're too weak to avoid hacking off your own leg.

Hmm... it can't be as simple as having started a new game and spawned at Jackrabbit Island, can it?

It's the laptop in the "lunch room" with the window entrance, IIRC.

The Lower Dam is one of the most deceptively difficult Buffer Memories to get in the Archivist challenge, precisely because of the live wires you mentioned and the layout of the dam putting the exit to/entrance from Winding River at opposite ends of the building. Easy to run out of food or water waiting in that one small room. The good news is that passing time/waiting indoors definitely doesn't prevent an Aurora from happening. I've had Auroras start while sleeping/waiting indoors on the Archivist challenge. You've just had lousy luck for 4-5 days. Don't forget to carry a bedroll with you, make regular daytime trips outside for food/water/fire etc, and make it back home to Lower Dam and be on the right side of the sparkies every day before sundown. Eventually, the heavens WILL reward your patience with some spooky green glow clouds. Good luck!

I play on lower difficulty settings (Voyageur or a custom setting with Voyageur-level wolves but Stalker/Loper loot) so I confess I sometimes trade warmth for style. Purely based on looks, my favorite combo is: Head: Rabbit Hat + Wool Scarf (not too warm but gotta have that pop of color!) Outer torso: Mariner's Pea Coat + Down Vest (Mariner's coat to be replaced with Wolfskin Coat if I happen to wind up with four pelts) Inner torso: Fisherman's Sweater + Wool Shirt Outer Legs: Jeans or Cargo + Deerskin Pants on the outside Inner Legs: Not picky, wool longjohns are great but rare Feet: Trail Boots for early game, then Mukluks if I find any, Deerskin Boots if not Hands: Wool Mittens at first, then Rabbit mitts Not at all the most practical setup but it keeps me warm enough and doesn't slow me down too much while mountain climbing.

Shot the bear at Spruce Falls Bridge and he stumbled off to die a little ways down the road on the Milton side of the bridge. The carcass was in a little depression in the snow. The weather was nice, the day was just beginning, and I needed to work on my carcass harvesting and cooking skill, so I set up a good long campfire right next to the bear and got to work. And a blizzard started. But through some extreme stroke of luck, the precise little depression where the bear had fallen was wind-shielded and remained so throughout the entire storm! I harvested the bear completely, cooking every steak and yanking every gut, blizzard roaring away above me the whole time. I thanked that bear profusely for the spot he chose to die and I think of him fondly every time I slip into my warm new bedroll.

Yup, I recognize the "bank robber" from some of my other saves, too-- he tends to spawn with a few wads of cash in his pockets, sometimes with a knife near his hand. He was definitely missing on my first pass through the bank. I spent a few days hunting/camping in the Milton Basin, then on return, here he was. Maybe it had to do with being far enough away from the town for long enough? Did I miss the chance to meet the only other person alive (well, briefly, anyway) on this frozen island? There was one other time I found a surprise like that in MT. I was playing a survival game and made my way through the cave above Spruce Falls Bridge to loot the crashed plane (this was before Redux). Re-entering the cave to come home, there was a brand-new ravaged wolf carcass on the cave floor right before the Spruce Falls exit. Maybe it's meant to be the bear's latest kill, reminding the player to tread lightly on the bridge lest they meet a similar fate. The MT region may have a few unique time-delayed spawns triggered by player activity.

TLD just threw something VERY creepy at me. I don't have a way to prove it, but this dead guy in the bank vault? He wasn't here when I looted the bank a few days ago. Same save, same game, I hadn't even left the Milton region. I cleared out the bank vault several days before this screenshot and I remember that the corpse wasn't there. Got an aurora while sleeping in the big Milton house, grabbed my flashlight, and dashed across the street-- because I am a sucker for those buffer memories-- and here he was. What the heck?!! Has this happened to anyone else?

Honestly, the worst jumpscare I ever had in TLD was when I achieved a feat. I was minding my business, just walking along, keeping an eye out for wolves, when suddenly ka-CHONG! Giant loud Snow Walker badge slams into my face! 🤣I nearly threw my controller across the room. Startled me way more than any bear has.

Yeah, the size mismatch is definitely apparent when it spawns in the case. It's okay though! It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it 😁