Morrick

Yes. Yes. 😁

Just recently, I was staying in the Island Cottage in Forsaken Airfield, and the blizzard outside lasted a whole in-game day. I had time to not just sip, but finish my whole mug of tea (spiked with whisky).

This is Winter Survival's Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1394960/Winter_Survival/ I saw some gameplay on YouTube. There isn't a sci-fi or post-apocalyptic premise. You get hurt and lost in the wilderness and have to survive until rescue comes, but in the gameplay I saw many things that reminded me of The Long Dark: having to evade wolves and bears, the resource management, the 'start a campfire' mechanic, etc. I don't know if it's tougher, but maybe it's worth keeping an eye on…

I seem to have a penchant for tower-like structures. One of my early favourite places to spend the night was the Lonely Lighthouse in Desolation Point. And whenever I pass through Mystery Lake or Coastal Highway, I make sure to spend a few nights in the Lookouts. I like the fact that you can look out from the windows, keep an eye on the weather and watch the day/night light change.

Behold the floating coal lumps at Brittle Cave!

Glad it helped! The other night I also tried double-clicking tld_borderless_dx11 and it worked as well (for me). Cheers!

LOL! All those GO! drinks, surely.

Started a second survival run. Female character this time. Started, again, in Broken Railroad. Again, very little useful clothing. But thanks to favourable weather, and sheer luck in choosing when to move onward, I made it to Junker's Paddock travelling this lightweight! I immediately started a fire to celebrate -- and warm up!

Me too. Glad I found this thread, because I was about to create one with exactly the same question, but wasn't sure in which subforum to post it. Another account I've noticed appearing as "Guest [username]" is kristaok, and — if memory serves well — she was also a nice person and I doubt she did or said something that warranted a ban. I just hope it was them who requested the deletion of their account, and that nothing serious was/is going on. It's a pity. Like @UpUpAway95said, jeffpeng was a wonderful contributor, and after 9 months of personal hiatus I was looking forward to read his posts when I returned here two weeks ago...

Thanks for the explanation. As I said in my previous comment: "I may be missing some important background information, though, because I still haven't played Wintermute", so I didn't know.

Having been playing this game for 5 years now, I have of course experienced a lot of lucky moments (along with terribly unlucky ones, mind you). I was positively cheering that time that I — who am still awfully clumsy at hunting wildlife — managed to one-shot kill a bear in Forlorn Muskeg near the Poacher's Camp. With a revolver. At an impossibly long distance. (It was of course pure RNG Gods' intervention, not skill, but still!) Another time I well remember was shortly after Bleak Inlet was added to the game, and I went exploring the new region. I wasn't well-equipped, and I was exploring the new-to-me Frozen Delta area, I noticed it was getting cold, so I started taking short naps to retrieve a bit of warmth. It was getting dark, I wasn't finding anything (also due to the foggy weather), so I decided to light a quick fire, maybe prepare some coffee for later, and take another short nap. I click on the bedroll and the Sleep/Pass Time interface appears as usual. Right then a notification on my iPhone distracts me… it's a message from my wife, she's at work and she's asking me to retrieve some information on a paper she had left at home. When I finish with her, I return to the game, forgetting what exactly I was doing, I see the Sleep/Pass Time interface and out of habit I select "9 hours". My character was tired and so he goes to sleep. When he wakes up, it's night, a blizzard is raging, and soon he's already at 40% hypothermia risk. Shit. Shit shit shit. I drink the coffee (but it has gone cold by now, you fool) and, panicked, I try to light another fire (but you're not in a windproof spot, you fool). I light my storm lantern and start wandering around. Not knowing the area, I obviously have no clue where to go. I eventually bump into the northernmost Hunter's Blind (the one closer to the exit to Forlorn Muskeg). At that point I have 98% hypothermia risk. The Hunter's Blind is better than nothing, but still it isn't that great of a shelter when you're in these conditions. Just when I'm thinking I'm not long for this survival run… the weather changes, the wind calms down, the blizzard recedes, and it's just light snow. I light another fire just outside the Hunter's Blind, and stay there for a few in-game hours until I'm warm again and hypothermia risk goes away. I exhale and feel… spared.

I'm male and an equal opportunity player: I alternate male and female characters. I like to start different survival runs and go in different directions in each sandbox, so I pick MacKenzie for run 1, Astrid for run 2, MacKenzie for run 3, etc. I do agree with others here when they say that the female character has better lines and is voiced a bit better. Too often MacKenzie sounds constipated and frustrated, and has a constantly complaining tone; even when he says things like "Looks like I survived another night" he sounds defeated; he makes me want to drive a fist in his upper arm and say, Dude, come ON, get to work, get out of this rut! Astrid has a more varied tone — sometimes she sounds hopeful, sometimes practical, sometimes sarcastic, and I think I would sound more like her if I were in the same situation.

Alas, I neither have a garage nor a separate storage space. The building where I live has parking spaces to put your car, there aren't individual garages. So, in this situation I would have to loot my car, and I wouldn't find much: some matches, work gloves, a thin vest, painkillers, a flashlight, some pieces of cloth, and that's basically it. I wouldn't survive for long in this real-life version of The Long Dark, LOL!

That last screenshot, with the silhouette of the cabin barely visible in the dark, is just fantastic and reminds me of so many times when I found myself in very similar circumstances… really an inch from 'fading into The Long Dark' but saved at the last minute. The worst of such circumstances was perhaps that one time in Forlorn Muskeg where I was desperately out hunting for food, wounded a bear after sunset, lost sight of it when trying to track it, it got dark, and the weather rapidly changed into a blizzard. I thought "I have heavy-enough clothing, I can take it", and started wandering in what I thought was the direction of the Poacher's Camp. Instead, it turns out I was going straight into the middle of the marsh, and fell through a spot of thin ice. "That's it, I'm done" — I thought, as I pulled out my last flare. At that point the only thing I could do was pick a direction and hope for the best. I was freezing, drained, overburdened, and walking in the blizzard at a glacial pace (no pun intended). I think I was down to maybe 15-20% condition when I recognised the familiar shape of Old Spence Family Homestead. The utter joy I felt at that point! Thankfully I still had 6 lumps of coal lying about, and the forge's furnace kept going for many hours as I recuperated in bed. Thanks for sharing your survival story!

The v2.05 [106000] hotfix created an issue on my system where the game doesn't launch after the initial Disclaimer screen, presenting a black screen instead. It is a relatively old Windows laptop (circa 2014) running Windows 10 Pro (2H22); the GPU is an integrated Intel HD4400. The version of the Long Dark is the one distributed via Steam. The solution indicated on the Hinterland Support website for this specific problem ("Black screen after disclaimer") suggests installing the Media Feature Pack optional feature in Windows, but such feature doesn't appear for my system/Windows version. After spending 30 minutes in utter frustration trying several other things, what eventually worked was this: Select The Long Dark in your Steam Library and click on the gear button on the right: In the menu that appears, select Manage > Browse local files This will open a new window in the File Explorer showing the root directory of your TLD installation within Steam. There are various executable files here: I double-clicked on tld_borderless_dx9 and the game launched without issues. I believe this is an option that instructs the game to launch with an older version of DirectX. While it's not really a bother to launch The Long Dark this way, I really hope a subsequent update will fix this issue. The game was running just fine prior to installing the v2.05 [106000] update.