UTC-10

I have noticed that with what I presume was the episode 4 update that the ravaged deer carcasses that have always been at Waterfront Cottages and on the ice near the Coastal Townsite have disappeared. This was in Coastal Highway. I don't touch the one at Waterfront Cottages as I don't need to and I used the one at Coastal Townsite as a source of crow feathers (until I got too many of them) so never touch that one either. I noticed the Waterfront Cottages missing carcass first but now as I went out to fish I noticed that the carcass that should be near the line of campfires I put down as a trail to and from the ice fishing hut was gone as well. Now that I think about it the ravaged deer carcass that should (usually/always) be at the Bear Creek Campground (picnic area) was also gone. I had assumed it was one of those if it appeared things. Maybe not now that I find other ravaged deer carcasses that always were in their usual spots also missing. Not sure whether that was intended or not.

Probably, in the current cultural time, the depiction of a SMLE on the cover of a fictitious magazine/book was considered too provocative. After all, because it shows a firearm, a fictional Will could be driven to seek out potential victims on Great Bear Island to commit mass murder. 😲 I suppose that the initial layout may have been thought to be kind of close to how a real magazine might do a cover layout and be subject to copyright or trademark infringement claims. Seems very unlikely but who knows what lurks in the dark mind of lawyers and their clients. 😅 Anyway, somebody got paid for the new graphic. Who am I to deny them the opportunity to earn some of their salary?

I have found that when placing from the radial menu that the item may retain an orientation that would not be obvious to the player. It can mean that the item cannot be placed in the spot where the player wants it even though it looks like it should. It can mean that when 'rotating' the item that the increments seem quite off. I have resorted to putting the darn thing down nearby (obviously it has to be "green" to be placed) and then try placing it from that spot. I have found that, often, not always, one can get the item a bit closer (some items the graphics footprint is just too big) and the rotation increments seem much better. On occasion I would be trying to place something like Coho salmon and trout to arrange them and the darn game would not let me. Okay, I will just DROP them all in a pile. Take that placement algorithm. 😁

Quartering yields bags that decay (in Pilgrim which is the only reference I have) about 2% per day. So in something less than 50 days or so, since the bags do not typically start at 100% and bag condition matches that of the meat contents, the bags would disappear as their meat contents reach ruined (0%) condition. The bear hide and guts would have still been there but degrading in condition until cured. Everyone has to make their own decision, but I would think If one has to leave a carcass then harvest as much as one dares - the meat, hide, and guts - and drop it all in the snow. All to be retrieved later. A carcass despawning in about 72 hours after the animal dies has been the case for years. The meat, hide, and guts, even in ruined condition, will persist long after the carcass would have disappeared. Too bad about the bear.

You broke the script sequence somehow. Since it is basically impossible to figure out what action you did or did not do that caused it, if that save you used ended up not allowing you to proceed (you did try again just to make sure it was not a chance glitch) then maybe you will have to delve farther back and try to carry on. I watched a play-through where the character died of suffocation so the player went to an earlier save (autosave in a deadly atmosphere might not work too well) and then space barred through the dialog (skipped it) to find himself pretty much where you were. He had to go back and took care to NOT hurry through the dialog which then got him through to where he wanted to be. Good luck.

There was a fair amount anomalies about when (and where) certain events took place. Can't be helped I guess.

I have to thank the crows for dropping feathers. I shot a wolf with an arrow in the Coastal Townsite. It ran away to the west (i.e. roughly across the townsite towards Log Sort). I was following the tracks and blood drops then blood drops then had a problem finding the blood drops. Sometimes there would be a blank area five or ten feet across but then I would come across more blood drops. I kept following the blood drops when I could find them. The trail led up into the upslope area from the coastal highway. Then I noted (using the journal) that the wolf had died (I didn't hear it die). I was in the area and wandered all around the area looking for that black shape on the snow. It was getting dark and snowing when I was calling it quits then came across a crow feather near the road. Climbed a short embankment and there was the wolf carcass. Great sigh of relief. Got my arrow back too.

Be glad that the car batteries can be harvested for the lead plates, it would have been worse if the fifteen 15 kg car batteries had to be moved to Last Chance Cannery then be broken down. 😨 I have been doing similar in Coastal Highway and Desolation Point. Got 72 lead plates (I am in Pilgrim) that I have to move to the Camp Office (and eventually to Bleak Inlet). After that it is onwards to Pleasant Valley and hopefully those car batteries whose lead plates I'll have to tote to Camp Office. Hope that will be enough for I have, so far, only found one gunsmithing book and will need to cast all the bullets I can. 😅

I don't know about fast LAND travel but maybe a kind of fast BOAT travel to move from specified location in one ocean region to another specified location in another ocean region. I can foresee fewer issues with boat travel than with land travel. That would kind of limit it to Perseverance Mills, Coastal Highway, Bleak Inlet, Crumbling Highway, and Desolation Point. Fast land travel would likely have to be from specified point to specified point for any kind of user instigated at will fast travel will undoubtedly include players using it to escape wolves, bears, moose, and blizzards unless there were consequences to using it in that fashion. Players have wanted to run all over the place and user controlled fast travel would kind of give them that.

Placing from the radial menu also can be problematic when one tries to adjust the item clockwise or counter-clockwise where each "increment" seems greater than it should be. There was also a minor issue with how close one can get to another object. I found that putting the item on the snow/floor/etc. then trying to place it from there seemed to ease some of the difficulty in aligning the object or how close it could get to another object. Now if the game would not tell me that placing a salmon on a snowy incline was an invalid place to put a comparatively flat object onto a nominally slanted but flat surface. Irregularities in the surface, like a blanket, can also get in the way. If that is a problem let me smooth out the blanket on the bed!

Be aware that when moving things like hides and guts that the game can now combine individual or groupings items of slightly different conditions (i.e. 100% and 99%) into one grouping when moving things back and forth. It requires that the character move things from storage to inventory. I discovered this when moving cured hides and guts around. The total number of items were there but, as an unexpected change, I was concerned about where some stuff had gone. What happened to my 99% cured guts?!? I reported this and while the explanation seemed plausible I would have preferred that the game not do that or maybe have had patch notes to explain it. Assuming I actually read and understood any patch notes. 😅

My distraction tends to be I am tired and I keep the character moving along. Suddenly, I walk off a short cliff, which wakes me up. 😲 In place with longer drops I tend to be more attentive or find a shelter until I can get more alert.

I have noticed that the placing of a rifle from the radial menu has been chanced in that the rotation of the rifle is now horizontal (I think the term is yaw) where before it was rotation around the axis (roll). Makes it much easier to place a rifle though I will miss being able to place the rifle with the bolt handle facing up - looks more natural to me. The placement of the bow seems to have been changed similarly. Before the bow in placement from radial menu would be sticking straight out and putting it on a table would be a sometimes impossible task as one couldn't get to the side of the surface so the bow would be "properly" oriented. Now the bow rotates (yaw) and so place was much easier. I don't recall having the same issue with the revolver but it can be placed similarly to the rifle.

It was the intention of the devs to bring the Bear Spear to survival mode. It was something that seemed perfectly reasonable to do. I suspect that implementation proved to be a more complex and involved process and likely problematic than they had thought it would be at the time.

To expand on my previous game thinks places already found are "New Location Discovered", I have found that it looks like the majority of [I should mention interior] locations in my save game get treated that way (Desolation, Coastal) since Episode 4 went live and I have even found that every time I enter a place like a Coastal House at Waterfront Cottages the place is New Location Discovered. Does not really affect me and I would expect that Hinterland will fix this as part of a hotfix of something more important or in the winter survival update when Blackrock Region should become available in Survival mode.

Found that, some places I had entered before episode 4 update were showing up as New Locations. It might not matter to most, but thought to let folks know what had happened. I reported this to support.

You may have noticed at the bottom of the inventory screens that there is now an option to: Move all to container Move all to inventory This feature is limited by the capacity of the container (obviously one cannot move more into a container than it can hold). Presumably an individual's inventory capacity is not limited though, of course, moving 200 kg of sticks from a large cabinet to inventory might be a bit of a pain. It appeared to not include any equipped item like worn clothing in the mass transfer. I saw this feature appear in a play-through of Episode 4 and did not realize that it apparently applied to survival mode too.

So what mode did you start in? Pilgrim, Voyager, Stalker, or Interloper? Some things applicable to the easier Pilgrim mode would be impractical or dangerous to rely on in more difficult modes (Voyager, btw, was supposed to be the default mode). In Pilgrim, predators do not attack by default, a one-stick fire (while it lasts) would keep you warm in the worst of blizzards, and you're not subject to cabin fever or intestinal parasites. Here's one that you should be aware of but not worry too much about depending on the character's circumstances. Frostbite risk means an extremity is exposed to the cold for a long enough time. The game warns you when you acquire the risk, when you get rid of the risk, and when, if applicable, you get the affliction. Do not use Feels Like Temperature or the Warmth Meter to gauge whether or not frostbite risk is getting better or worse. Look at body status and pay attention to the frostbite risk. Once it hits 100% you get frostbite and that is a permanent affliction (one of the few/only one in the game) reducing your maximum condition by 10% (which can be sort of negated by the well-fed buff if frostbite only occurred once) for each time you get the affliction which can be done repeatedly. You can be "completely warm" and still get frostbite. Word of advice, get a covering (that is not frozen) on every exposed extremity no matter how poor it is e.g. a baseball cap is better than nothing on the head. The improvised headwrap and handwraps were introduced because modes like Interloper will tend to be much colder and coverings hard to come by making frostbite a greater hazard.

With New Cooking we got the capacity to walk away from the fire and do other things. An expansion of New Cooking to add things like recipes, even simplistic ones, have been requested since New Cooking appeared. It would have been a natural expansion. At this point, it maybe a late in the game to get that but certainly it would be something that might be implemented once Wintermute (story mode) is concluded. Assuming that the devs have not been sneakily planning to change New Cooking to add recipes in episode 4 or 5. It would be nice to be able to cook a HOT meal (not drinks) which cannot be done in the current game unless one is "cooking" certain canned goods.

A thought when using a forge. (This was in Pilgrim so YMMV but something to keep in mind) The most efficient, uses least amount of coal, to fire the furnace to forge operating temperature of 150 C would be ten sticks followed by seven coal. At level 5 fire starting ten sticks would be almost two hours of fire duration (about 1:50) and +10 C and seven coal would be 10.5 hours (7 x 1.5 hours) and +140 C. Total +150 C and you can forge. Note that: 1) the maximum fire duration is 12 hours so you might have to wait a while - make a can of potable water - before that last coal can be put in the fire, and 2) if for any reason, while the furnace is at +150 C, you decide to pull a torch from the furnace, taking that torch REDUCES TEMPERATURE BY 1 C so now your furnace is at +149 C and you can no longer at forging temperature. Because the maximum temperature with wood is +80 C, you will have to add another coal to the fire. Naturally if you end up with the furnace temperature much greater than 150 C to begin with it won't be a problem. Good luck and happy forging.

Ingenious.

I believe that the warning about eating raw meat only works when using the radial menu because of the LMB (eat) versus RMB (place) feature of it. Saved me a few times and not so long ago. Double click in inventory and the game will happily let you eat raw meat without a qualm. I know that I got myself food poisoning a few times that way. 😅

I better get a move on. I have a character that just got to Coastal Highway and is getting settled in to Quonset and setting up the region. 😅

I have discovered that it appears that the journal counting elapsed time (i.e. days survived) applies to all regional counters. Since the counter shows only full days, presumably there can be unindicated hours for each region visited that won't show up until the cumulative elapsed time meter passes 24 hours which would increment the counter by 1 day and zeroes out the meter which starts to build up again. I also had a bit of a strange in that the journal entry for Mystery Lake seemed 'stuck' at 218 days despite spending a lot of time in Mystery Lake and until I went into the cave to Milton and came back out where the journal entry then read 219. The Awake and Rested combined total exceeding the apparent hours for the journal's days survived by way more than 24 hours leaves me baffled. Duplication of something, somewhere? Maybe the other "unaccounted for 'regions' " like Ravine, Ravine Basin, and maybe interior transition caves might be double counted???

For me it will always flow from Mystery Lake river to Winding River. Now that I think about it, given my belief, the dam's infrastructure is laid out incorrectly. The power generation (the water turbines and the generators connected to them) should have been nearer the base on the Winding River side. On the other hand, if Carter Hydro was more of a low head power generation dam that would make sense for Mystery Lake but it would not be as massive as shown in the game. I suppose, as I have thought about Ash Canyon, the Mystery Lake Region is laid out fine for adventuring/exploration/gaming purposes but it would not work (or not work at all well) when considering someone actually having to work (or live there as the case may be). But that's just me.