UTC-10

Nothing wrong with the idea but it seems unlikely until Wintermute is concluded (or some quest in episode 4 or 5 required it) that it would be implemented any time soon. Would be nice, but until it becomes something in the game, just have to take precautions and hope for the best.

Blood trail (and tracks) persistence has been a sore point about hunting. I (in Pilgrim) have shot deer and wolves in Broken Railroad then went determinedly on their trail. From an initial blood trail, I have seen it peter out unaccountably. Sometimes the tracks persist, sometimes the blood drops persist, and there were times when both didn't. The fact that they will just disappear (right in front of my eyes while I am tracking) especially once the animal dies did not help. If not for Broken Railroad being a rather limited area, around the lake, I might not have found the animal carcass. But I have not had a wounded animal from the git go not leave a blood spatter and blood trail. At least I don't remember that occurring in recent memory.

What does and does not get added to the game in story or survival mode is up to the discretion of the developers. So we have whetstones but cannot craft them. There would also be a question of just how realistic/unrealistic the developers wanted things to be. The devs also had to face facts. The change from a decay time line of 100 days to 1,000 days likely reflected the unexpected popularity of survival sandbox and so having a way to maintain tools such as knives and hatchets would be a reasonable decision (i.e. it would be unrealistic to not have something) and not being able to make more of the "way to maintain tools" would also be a reasonable decision (don't have too much of a good thing) too. One can also say maybe "a bit short-sighted" or "a momentary lack of imagination". Happens to everyone.

Food that reached ruined inside a container disappears. * Food that spawned in the container can remain there even if it goes to ruined. I just don't find that too often and if I was wrong I would only find an empty container anyway. The only things, so far as I have found, that can go to ruined inside (or be put as ruined into) a container is clothing. One can also put ruined torches into containers and they survive. I suspect that is a dispensation on the assumption that the ruined items can be harvested for materials (i.e. cloth or sticks). It would be convenient and helpful to be able to store food supplies (meat, canned goods, etc.) in a container rather than strewn all over the desk/table/floor, but the danger of losing it if one were to walk away to explore some other region seems too great. * Strange event. After Lost and Found, I came out of the Camp Office and looked into the Regional Lost and Found (RLF) box on the porch. I was astounded to see ruined meat in the box. What I should have done (in hindsight) was grab every piece and throw it on the snow but, instead, I was so surprised I ran inside to "save" the game and when I came out again the ruined meat had disappeared. Possibly the Lost and Found event had moved all that ruined meat strewn all over the region to the RLF box which 'saved' it but once I then "saved" the game the usual rule applied. 😓

The quartering bags are containers. When the meat condition inside the bags reaches 0% (ruined) the meat will disappear per the general ruined item in a container rule and since the bag's reason to exist was to hold the meat [and bones] from quartering, it disappears too. How fast quartering bags decay may depend on the difficulty mode for I play in Pilgrim and I remember that the meat in the bags decayed at what seemed to me to be near the ordinary rate, maybe marginally faster but not super fast. I know I quartered a wolf and kept a couple bags unharvested then took one bag inside the fisherman's cabin in Coastal Highway and it disappeared when the meat contents reached 0%. IIRC it certainly didn't decay like it was on the wolf carcass. I never depend on the quartering bags, on those occasions when I do quarter a large animal, to act as storage. I will harvest the meat from the bags at my earliest opportunity.

Keeping in mind that the actual intended duration for The Long Dark was a matter of a few weeks (Wintermute/Story mode) and not many years (Survival mode) the need to be able to create a whetstone from anything would not be a high priority. Certainly if the intent of The Long Dark was the other way around, tools would be way more durable and items like whetstones and cleaning kits would last a whole lot longer and maybe even something that could be crafted. We'll have to see if there will be DLC that adds such things once Wintermute is concluded. Funny that my (and probably others) long-ago idea of a big immobile grindstone to serve as a permanent whetstone that characters could use, albeit not so conveniently accessible, showed up as the aurora-powered drill press that uses scrap metal to fix knives and hatchets, etc..

When the bear is bleeding out, be aware that if you go into a house, say you're escaping a vengeful bear, you should come back out in a relatively short time. When you go into a house, the outside world despawns as does the bear. The game maintains the game state for a period of maybe one game hour. It also keeps track of the fact the bear was bleeding. After a game hour, the game does not consider the game state when you entered the house to be valid anymore. So when you now exit the house, it will respawn the outside world. Now the tricky part: if you stayed in the house long enough (i.e. the bear would have bled out) when the world gets spawned, the game checks whether the bear bled out and if it did then the bear spawns and dies. If the bear would not have bled out it spawns normally, uninjured. So if you go inside for any length of time be sure to stay a good long time that is longer than the bear's bleed timer or prepare to be surprised that its wandering around unharmed. If the above does not apply to your given situation when you shoot the bear, you can disregard it but maybe keep it in mind so you know what can happen. Good luck.

Reading all the practical gunsmithing books you can find, then bringing as many lead plates (and the other components) to the ammunition workbench then making bullets is the way to go. At least the workbench furnace only has to be working (no required minimum temperature) to be used to cast bullets (1 hour per plate to get six bullets). Perhaps the biggest limitation of that furnace is that it can only be used for casting bullets. No making water. No cooking food. At least one can take a torch from it to light the nearby fire barrel for cooking purposes.

If you swap the contents, or add to them, do the "contents" shown change?

Haven't been there recently. That is different and unusual. I don't remember anything like that. You really need to turn off the x-ray eyes option. 😉

Just have to be lucky. It pays to maybe have a large pile of stones and keep an eye on where the stone flies when it is thrown but it still boiled down to being lucky.

The game is centered about Wintermute (story mode) so, in one sense there is no need for making or replacing whetstones. A pain for long-term survival mode players to be sure, but that's just the way things are. There is a drill press located in Bleak Inlet that, when accessed and when the aurora is active, will fully sharpen a variety of tools (knife, hatchet and the improvised versions of them) and repair firearms (revolver and rifle) for the cost of a piece of scrap metal for each attempt. So that facility in the latter part of your post has already been done. It is just not available everywhere. Although it was not a promise, the devs did kind of say that maybe the things that can be repaired on the drill press may be expanded bit by bit over time.

The idea would require some implementation of persistence across different save games, especially since death means the particular save game is wiped, and that would be a structural issue in the game design. That would also not be a trivial change in the game design too. If the developers decide they wanted to implement the idea that's their problem because they have to do all the back-room work needed for implementation. Other than that, depending on how it was implemented, I doubt I'd have any objection to it.

That may come about eventually but almost certainly after Wintermute is concluded. It could be handy but probably not worth enough to the game to warrant (making assumption here) the developers spending time to make that modification in the sleep mechanics.

Probably eventually. This has been suggested in the past in various forms. The actual intended game was constrained by the needs of Wintermute. A very limited period of time of maybe a few game-weeks from beginning to end. That leaves a big hole in survival mode in the range of things that can be done in survival mode which has a life span of game-years.

The bears do not become invincible but you have to understand the animal model used in the game. Critical hits kill on the spot but bleeding wounds take time before the animal dies of blood loss. There are also trivial wounds which don't do anything but can be hard to distinguish from actual meaningful wounds (excepting critical hits since the animal dies right away). A bear, nominally sleeping on the snow, has two postures. One when it is merely sleeping and another when it is actually dead. Shoot a bear and it will get up and, if it was sleeping, it will tend to go back to sleep (but that's in Pilgrim, YMMV). Sleeping bears, in some unlikely spot, has been a thing for a while. All one can do is be careful. Might find this post I made helpful: It is in the survival mode forum about February 18. In case the url does not come through. Note that when sleeping the bear's paw covers its snout and when it is dead the paw is not.

The developers wanted to bring the Bear Spear of story mode (Wintermute) into survival mode but that seems to have been a much more difficult proposition to implement than they had originally thought. Given how a player/character might use or be expected to use or try to use a spear outside of a scripted encounter (as in Wintermute) the implications of spear use in survival likely presented the developers with a host of things to consider that would be affected (at least in their minds) and then having to work out how the changes would affect game-play. A not so easy process when considering playability and game balance. Probably once Wintermute is no longer a factor in the development process, we'll eventually see something be developed into an implementation (if survival game development continues). The ITEM itself is the easy part. How the item is to be used in the game environment with what consequences is much harder. Other than that non-trivial aspect, there's nothing wrong with the concept.

Requests for cooking to be expanded, especially after new cooking was introduced, to have recipes have been around a long time. Would still be nice to have. Even simple recipes to start, like making a stew from water and venison (or any meat or even fish) would be nice. Although it might have some unbalancing effects, the provision of actual hot food like a hot stew would be interesting since, excepting things like tomato soup and pork and beans, hot food as such is not readily available in the game. Just that the impediment would be the back-room work the devs would have to do before anything could be implemented.

I took a look at vanilla pilgrim on the custom template. I think that for wolf fear and for wildlife detection range both defaulted to medium. If wolf fear is set to low (which I think is the lowest setting) the wolf (in any other mode) would be more difficult to scare away. That may or may not help the get close to the wolf. I would assume the wildlife detection range would make it easier to get closer if set to low. What @piddy3825posted is probably the only other way to sneak up on a wolf. It can become easier if the wolf is actually busy with consuming a kill. Just don't get too close and stand up as that engages the wolf attack animation, rather than growling, which is about the only time I have seen wolf fear get overridden on the spot. I have never actually tried to continue to walk towards a wolf that was growling at me, so I don't know if that can provoke an attack but sneaking in too close (relative terms) to arrow it and then standing up (I was not at level 5 archery) to shoot for a twofer got me attacked right away by the wolf. Shook me up pretty good the first time it happened and I spent some time bleeding after the wolf ran away until I could get my composure back and think straight.

I believe that one has the option to choose to sleep and pass time (obviously not at the same time) in vehicles, beds, or bedrolls. Take a look at the top center of the UI when you've clicked on a bed or a bedroll or selected the semi-pseudo bedroll (or the bearskin bedroll if you have it in inventory) while in a vehicle. It defaults to sleep on the left side of the icon, but you can switch it to pass time on the right side of the icon. In that case, when passing time, you get the warmth bonus of the vehicle, bed, or bedroll while that is in progress. Take a look. It is easy to miss. If one just uses the pass time selection from the radial menu then one just is passing time but not in a bed, bedroll, or vehicles as the case may be.

There is inside and there is outside and where the meat/fish is placed matters. So it is location that matters. Using a house as an example, anywhere inside the house is inside and meat/fish degrade faster (for me in Pilgrim typically 3 or 6% a day for cooked or raw meat). Outside, in the snow for instance, meat/fish degrade slower (for Pilgrim, typically 1% a day) YMMV. Refrigerators don't count (no power). Freezing temperatures inside a house don't count. There is no explicit food preservation in the game which probably is a result of story mode being the focus - story mode as a game would represent a couple weeks time at most for most players - rather than survival mode which can last for years. Once story mode is concluded that situation may change.

If you can, try to get to a point where the moose cannot get to your (or that you could do something like go down a bit of a slope that it cannot negotiate) location. This has its own risks, i.e. sprains, but you're hunting something that if it gets its hooves on you will take you about a week (was it 120 hours?) to recover and requires bandages and pain killers to effectuate the heal- the broken ribs will limit what you can do or the extent you can do them - it would be an idea to take that into account. You would want to try and hit the moose's head. Neck would be second best and the chest area third. The head has the best chance for a critical hit which would drop it on the spot. It does not bleed out like every other animal so you actually have to shoot it. If it does not drop and then runs away, rather than stomp you into mush, listen carefully. Listen anyway. If it is making sounds (the moose previously would routinely be silent unless provoked) that indicates that you scored a shall we say "serious" hit and another arrow that hits it - the head would be preferable or the neck or chest at least - has a good chance of taking it down on the spot *. * I play Pilgrim so routinely don't have to worry too much about being stomped but I did notice that a "wounded" moose seemed to make sounds and a second well-placed shot tended to be reliably successful in taking it down. YMMV. Good luck.

Looks like a fairly normal average (by meat content) rabbit to me.

Interesting. There being that many discrete items looks like a glitch. Much like the polaroid in a container on the top of the inaccessible butte in Ash Canyon which Hinterland later said was a mistake.

There's at least one, maybe two in Coastal Highway which serve no purpose other than to be used for climbing. One can walk around on the snow road easily enough. Always found climbing (up or down) to be pretty taxing on fatigue. Might be an activity that could benefit from even some kind of climbing skill.