UTC-10

A jury-rigged shielded hand lantern that can retain a charge from the aurora so one can have light for a limited amount of time after the aurora is over. Found at Suzuki observatory. Its endurance in use might be up to one game hour (or two if it is equivalent to a full storm lantern), maybe dependent on the condition of the device (the lower the condition, the shorter the endurance time) and it might be able to store the charge for awhile, maybe for six to eight hours, before it dissipates (or is used up, whichever comes first) and has to be recharged. It has no high-beam setting to fend off aurora wolves. Due to the shielding it would be twice as heavy as a "normal" flashlight but would recharge whenever the main aurora effects occur. An aurora-powered fire starter using arcs to ignite the tinder basically equivalent in effectiveness to a fire striker. The arcs can also serve as an effective means of fending off aurora wolves. The fire starter remains functional only during the aurora. As an option (by the devs), the device may take condition loss from use but can be repaired with scrap metal and a tool kit (get more use out of it). A sharp metal shiv like what Will used in episode 1 in lieu of a knife. It can be crafted from one scrap metal at a work bench. It cannot be sharpened or maintained. It cannot be used in a wolf struggle (it is too small and clumsy). It is otherwise equivalent to an improvised knife as far as durability (condition loss) and use is concerned. Once ruined it can only be discarded there is nothing to salvage from it. Obviously none of these will happen.

I am in Ash Canyon and always craft a stone cache (eventually two) near Angler's Den Cabin. I don't want the graphics to interact so place the cache(s) at either end of the river island the cabin sits on. Doesn't always work (the graphic interaction). I discovered that the game has now greater restrictions on where the cache can be placed. There was an area with large flat-topped rocks at one end of the river island and I found, to my dismay, that I could no longer place the cache anywhere on those rocks as it was "too close to an object". I put the cache on the snow at the other end of the river island which would be normally the site for the second cache.

I have several sandboxes, all Pilgrim, that I play in rotation. Sure they go over the same ground, not necessarily in the same order, but I just deal with it. About the time episode 4 came out, I had started yet another Pilgrim sandbox because by that time all of my usual sandboxes were then in Ash Canyon and I didn't want to bring them out of there just yet. This new sandbox has now gone through most of the regions (I did not go to Mountain Town/Milton or Hushed River Valley in any of my sandboxes for reasons) and excepting Bleak Inlet, has now started into Ash Canyon. One thing I did with this sandbox was to force the Mystery Lake hunting cache to spawn (by dint of starting again and again). I was surprised when I found that it had also spawned the hunting cache in Pleasant Valley (the first time I found that one). I expect to play each sandbox in rotation until I get them all to where the game ends, presumably Perseverance Mills. Whether I then go to Milton and Hushed River Valley depends on reasons. I expect that I will tire of TLD at some point especially if nothing new is introduced but it has been a fine time-waster and recreation for me for years. At least I didn't have to do participate in repeated raiding or small fellowship actions to advance through it. 😀

Given your current situation, if the scripted game play has been derailed it may be that it is badly stuck by some action or something up to that point. If you're lucky enough to have a save before you went to the SE tower (where you didn't have a bear encounter), you might load that then go do the SE tower. If you don't you may have to do more than just that tower, like the other two and redo the bear encounters and obtaining the parts. At worst, you may have to go way the heck back, lose all that game progress, and then proceed from there. Good luck.

I discovered that down in the bowels of the Cinder Hills Mine Aurora annex that I could read the Advanced Guns Guns Guns (AGGG) book during the day while sitting waiting for the day to pass (and hopefully the aurora would appear to let me out). I recently tried using a hacksaw to cut up a metal shelving in the annex. I found that during the day, not during the night, I could actually cut up the shelving without igniting a light source. The same thing on the access passage to the elevator where there was a couple of metal shelving. Now on that level technically there still was the "door" to the outside. This led me to think that if I can do that in the annex then how about in the upper part of Cinder Hills Mine (not the annex) which has a work bench? I had never tried this because, obviously, it is DARK in there and no campfires means torches, flares or lanterns. I went into the Cinder Hills Mine work bench and tried crafting a simple something or mending something, without a light source, and I could do it in the dark as long as it was day outside. Interesting. I hope this would not be considered a bug and get "fixed". I would find that very regrettable. Not quite on subject but only found out recently.

I would expect that the prison won't be destroyed - in survival mode the actions of Will, Jace, and Mathis and company would not have occurred - though it might not be much more explorable or functional than what episode 4 allowed. One might expect the prison to be pretty reasonable from an adventuring point of view, plenty to explore, and yet lacking from a truly operational one (which was how I viewed Ash Canyon), who would build this kind of place or how the heck could it function? I would expect that the steam tunnels will either be accessible or not but we won't be manipulating valves and such to unlock doors, etc. Also, likely no suffocation pockets either in the tunnels or at the mine. Those served a purpose in story mode but would be a serious and unnecessary nuisance in survival.

Interesting thing to find out. Note I play in Pilgrim. Wolves had killed two deer near the Wing on Timberwolf. It was late and I harvested the hide and guts off one of the deer with the intent to return the next day and harvest all the rest. I was staying in the Bear cave, because it was close and I had an Air BnB reservation, and dropped the hide and guts which started to cure. Next day I picked up the hide and guts, went to the other deer and harvested the hide and guts off it (and the venison off one of the carcasses) then went to the Echo Ravine Cave (aka Chasm Cave) and dropped the hides and guts. To my surprise, as I was going to arrange them, I found that both hides and the guts I dropped were all 11% cured. Can't be, right? There was a set that should only be starting to cure. But there they were. Both hides and the four guts were all 11% cured. Baffling it was. 🙂

I actually find a minor mannerism (clearing his throat) by Will as part of a phrase he utters to be so irritating that it ruins for awhile my mood most of the time he does it. The phrase itself doesn't bother me at all. Other than my verbalizing "nobody asked you" or "sorry about that" on occasion, none of the other phrases uttered by Will or Astrid really bother me. Since I know that the comments uttered by Will and Astrid or their mannerisms generally reflect things like the state of their encumbrance (I am most tolerant of that) or hunger or thirst or fatigue or how cold they are (par for the course), I don't find it much of a problem.

I have made the belated discovery that (on my computer) that if I hit the "K" key the crafting menu comes up. I found this out recently by accident as this was not a user configurable key like the keyboard adjacent key "J" for the Journal. Up until now I had always used the "J" key to get to the journal then mouse-selected the crafting graphic at the top. I had been thinking that there should be a shortcut to the crafting menu and, to my surprise, there it was! 😲

Never played interloper, don't plan to, so any info I give would likely be out of line with what might actually be there. FWIW, in Pilgrim, aside from the Summit which you indicate you already have been to, my notes say that a cargo container (in Pilgrim there would be two containers) in Deer Clearing may contain a simple toolkit (the upper compartment of the two in the container). In case it matters, this container would be the one on the snow with the other cargo container on top of a rocky hill. Good luck. This was Pilgrim info and Interloper is much much scarcer.

I don't think painting the arrows would be as anywhere nearly as helpful as imagined but if the devs were willing to spend the time to implement it I would have no objections. If the arrow stuck (and remained stuck) in the animal, finding the animal finds the arrow. If the arrow fell off the animal as it flees, then the chances of finding that lone arrows (painted or not) would be slim unless one trailed the animal's path. Even then that would be problematic given the rather random direction changes it makes and tracks and blood trail disappearing rather quickly. But one can get lucky.

Unless you're in Pilgrim. Then they wake up and run away. I do not know why bears decide to go to sleep in the open rather than return to their cave (and I have seen a bear sleeping in its cave). I have seen bears in some odd but not unreasonable locations snoozing away. It was not even night. Baffling it is. 🙂

(IMO) The basic premise for the proposal is that the criminal gang would have accumulated a good amount of gear and supplies at the prison AND that Will (and Jace) would somehow be informed that the observatory needed more supplies so they went back to obtain them. It would probably be difficult as the game does not have a good way to handle "independently" operating NPCs in concert with a character. Likely it would devolve to Will taking actions with Jace in the background (like episode 4) so it would be no different from a significant quest. The chain of events of how this quest might proceed is generally laid out. 🙂 Where this would fit into episode 4 I don't know. Sounds like a proposition for episode 5, since information about the observatory was not made known to Will until near the very end, but that would be the last planned episode so it would be a lot to pack into a single episode especially as (presumably) Astrid is supposed to be reunited with her locked case - Will having brought it to Perseverance Mills - and she can presumably treat this "plague" that was the reason for her to go to Great Bear, and there is still Mathis and his criminal gang to contend with. 😅

Related to the consolidation of cured hides and guts that were 1% condition apart, I have found and manipulated the same thing for matches on a limited basis. I had 78% and 77% matches. I was able to combine the 78% and 77% matches to get 78% matches. I have 79% matches but the 78% matches didn't combine with them, yet. One can hope. This applies on the same limited basis to cardboard and wood matches. The things one finds out.

IIRC, the bearskin coat was on the path, off to one side, to the Gold Mine about the last stretch before reaching the point where you climb down into the gold mine basin. Didn't always happen but I tend to have a lot of bear skins to use to fix it (it was about half way to ruin). 😁

I got a bearskin bedroll at Pensive Lookout at least once. It was even serviceable. I remember getting a ragged bearskin cloak in Ash Canyon which I mended but don't actually use (Pilgrim conditions for me so no need to).

I would think that immobile table lamps might be more in line with the kind of lighting in houses. By being immobile, the problem of how the light they cast illuminates the area might be manageable enough for the devs to implement them. I think that the housing on Great Bear tended to be too modern for that kind of wall mounted oil lamps (not that I would object to they appearing). If electrification had been more limited they would make a dandy substitute for electric lights such as at Mountaineer's Hut, Mystery Lake lake cabins, and some of the more isolated cabins, and in Ash Canyon where there were no electric lights and even flashlights were pretty rare. The Gold Mine sure could have used them and would be a practical (IRL) improvement in there. Maybe some of those drums mounted on stands might contain lamp oil. I can see one or more of the mounted drums at Miner's Folly in the barn structure and up by Foreman's Retreat containing lamp oil that the miners didn't bother to take with them as being inconvenient when they left. A few liters of lamp oil (actually kerosene) being left behind would seem quite possible.

On other threads, Hinterland has said they're looking into the issue. Apparently those carcasses disappearing was unintended.

I have just noticed that the calorie content of raw meat is different in a few cases from before and after the update. Raw Before After Cooked (Lvl 5) Wolf 700 800 875 Deer 800 900 1,000 Bear and Moose 900 900 1,125 Since most people do not eat raw meat the Before and After for raw meat does not really matter that much, but note that the cooked calories content then equals 1.25 x Before but not 1.25 x After. If the After numbers were intended then the Cooked numbers should go up accordingly. That would put venison on the same level as bear and moose meat and wolf meat on the same level as old venison, so it seems likely that somewhere a couple numbers got glitched. I did some cooking just to verify that the calories from cooked wolf and deer meat remained the same while the raw calories were different. Just to be sure. Just anomalous behavior in game that I am pretty sure will be fixed at some point. Not critical unless someone makes a habit of eating raw wolf and deer meat.

Well that is new and a change. Conventional wisdom up to that point would be never touch a ravaged animal carcass that spawned with the sandbox unless you expect to harvest it. Don't even look at what it contains that is touching it. This has been the case for several years. I do not dispute that the devs can change things at their discretion. I would only think that they should mention that they were making that change. In general, I play easy mode so it really does not hamper my game play. Good luck to everyone. Hmmm, I recall that the spray paint marks were supposed to be permanent until episode 4 where they were supposed to start to degrade. I wonder if maybe the wrong thing got flagged. 😉

The loss of ravaged animal carcasses that were spawned when the sandbox was created would be a major change of something that was long-standing. Implementing such a change for a story mode update, as opposed to a survival mode update, which lacked any kind of patch notes would be unusual but not impossible. It is unexpected changes like that which can seriously handicap a player who is unaware of the change and needed those carcasses for survival. I would hope that Hinterland would eventually make reference to that change if change it is.

Depending on your temperament, you might want to prepare very well (if cabin fever would be a factor that kind of limits how much preparation you should do) and/or be prepared to scum the effort and either give up on it or try again. I went in prepared for up to 15-20 days and willing to scum it because I can't stand losing in that fashion. I got all my searching done on the first day after entry then settled down for a potential long wait, as aurora events tended to be infrequent, when the mine lit up that night and I got out with all my loot. I did notice, FYI, that when it is daylight outside, even though it is dark inside the mine level (maybe can make out some outlines), you can use a hacksaw to cut up shelving and read the Advanced Guns Guns Guns magazine (that I found and I knew I could read). I would assume but didn't test that one could mend clothes in the dark as well. Hopefully that is a feature not a bug so the devs don't come around and spoil the show. 😉

As I noted, food poisoning from cooked meat and fish (and even canned goods) tends to be infrequent or fairly rare, so it would not be any surprise that you could eat a lot of non-ruined food prior to level 5 and not get food poisoning. Of course, some folks can't look at ruined food and not get food poisoning but then the RNG must hate them. 😐

The only revolver, in my current sandbox, I found in Coastal was in the Cinder Hills Mine AURORA annex. It was in a backpack down one of the tunnels from the elevator area. I also found a rather decent condition rifle next to a body down there. I believe I found a rifle in poor condition while out and about in Coastal but forget where I found it.

Well you can eat cooked mouldy meat at any level. Whether you can do so without any other consequence is another matter. When you ate the cooked mouldy meat were you at Level 5 cooking? Level 5 confers immunity to food poisoning (and intestinal parasites) for any cooked food regardless of the cooking skill level it was cooked at. So the bear meat cooked back at level 1 could be consumed safely when at Level 5. Raw meat/fish does not come under this benefit. Food poisoning even from low condition cooked meat tends to be a fairly rare event (IMO, as I know that some will dispute the "rare" reference with reason given their experiences) but it is can happen if not at Level 5. One reason why significant effort is put into getting to level 5 cooking so it stops being a worry unless, of course, one eats raw meat or fish...