UTC-10

With that concentration of things and facilities, I would imagine that there would be a "horde" of wolf packs and timberwolf packs prowling the region. If I never thought about leaving the region to check on other bases I may have set up, this proposed region would be very good for a final base.

Killing a wolf outright with a melee weapon (knife or hatchet) can happen but usually it gets driven off and can bleed out. That can take time. It is not a good idea to be in biting range as it wanders around before finally dying - it can decide on the last great bite of defiance or something. Always try to take precautions before going where there may be a threat. The revolver is a useful tool, but it is not a panacea to the threat of wolves. Be aware, if you were not, that firing the revolver without aiming can provide a benefit of "frightening" the wolf if the wolf is at a reasonable range. A "frightened" wolf does not attack. It is a bit more interested in getting away. At that point, an aimed shot might be tried without causing the wolf to attack. Good luck.

Survival mode was in support of Story mode not the other way around. In fact, survival mode was not even supposed to exist. It was just that the survival sandbox proved to be so popular they just had to make it a mode of play. So until Story mode was concluded, so Hinterland would be freed of that constraint, any substantial change for the game area was not going to happen.

Did you look into: C:\Users\Owner(<-this varies with the user)\AppData\Local\Hinterland\TheLongDark (<- this is a folder) Sounds like your user file got corrupted and is no longer valid. You might want to poke around until you find it. If it was corrupted there is probably little that can be done though others might have an idea or two. If you start the game again, I would guess that it would overwrite the old user file, so you might want to look as much as you can. If you find the save game folder, copy the contents to another folder to preserve the files. I have no other advice. I am afraid that you might be "screwed". Sorry.

Never heard Will make any kind of statement like that. At least I don't recall anything like that.

We might want to be more precise in what is meant by stuck. There is stuck where once in a location the character cannot leave the location - i.e. they have fallen/stepped into a depression and since the depth of the depression exceeds how high one can step the character is stuck. There is stuck where the character runs up against some raised object that blocks forward progress but can be gotten around/passed. One breaks a players game (though there is the quit and reload) and the other is an inconvenience since the player is not permanently stopped. That does not mean that the inconvenience should be ignored, but in the priority of things to do or need fixing that is not as important. I remember in Coastal Highway where the log rafts at Log Sort used to be easy to traverse, almost effortless. Then that got changed and it became more of a problem to traverse the rafts. It was not as casual an action. Then, episode 3? or recent update, it became easy to traverse the log rafts. I have also notice, at least on the docks, that uneven decks do not get in the way like they used to. This is not to say that this effect was completely uniform for I still get a few frustrating instances where something could not be cross directly but I was not unable to move around it. I know nothing about how TLD and Hinterland adjudicate this kind of movement, but I would hope the devs would give serious consideration to extending it as much as possible.

The only minor problem would be that one still needs to obtain gut to make the lines for fishing tackle since fish do not supply any. One does have to keep one's mind flexible as I find it hard to use my brimming full jerry cans. I think if I use any then I'll have to do more fishing and to refill it to the top again! I have gotten a little better over time but it can be funny to look and see four full jerry cans, a desk drawer full of ten lantern fuel bottles, a couple full lanterns, and still think "my god, what if I run out". 😁

Ravine to Bleak Inlet is two climbs. One down to the Ravine Basin (byor) and then one from the Pensive lookout into lower Bleak Inlet which may be byor. It might be more illustrative to break Ravine into Ravine and Ravine Basin.

Can't really help since it could be just about anywhere. I assume you did but have to ask. You did check the hunter's blinds (low and high)? How about Marsh Ridge (there is a camp site and maybe a corpse up there)? The Old Spence forge? The hunter's blinds seem more likely than Marsh, but you never really know with the RNG.

But wouldn't you like to have two so you can find out by direct experimentation and tell us how well or poorly it worked? 😁

In Winter's Embrace, nominal Voyager level game, I found that firing an unaimed revolver shot while the wolf was reasonably close caused it to become "frightened" and then if you can aim the gun on it you can fire, maybe scoring a hit, though it would be often a moving target. While it was in a "frightened" mode it would not attack at all. Because WE was a short-term (to me) game, I had no issue with firing a couple shots - one to frighten, one to kill or wound - as the ability to reload ammo mitigated the extra ammo usage. I am still perplexed why in the few wolf struggles I did get into in WE why I was unable to get the melee bar to rise at all. I chalked that up to something related to my computer but I had no idea what.

FWIW I do not think that wolves per se are broken but I concede that I lack the experience to be personally sure as I really don't have to deal with them. I stopped playing Voyager a long time ago because, in an update, the torch trick no longer worked. I could see why that was done though it ultimately drove me to Pilgrim.

Well, the elevator she uses, then the passage from the elevator she takes until she gets to the outside corresponds to the new passage and (aurora-powered) elevator in Coastal Highway near Log Sort. So that spot exists to the best we know. I think that one thing we do know is that if a location appears in Story mode, then it has to appear in Survival mode to keep the landscape consistent. In any case, my big question would be how would Astrid and Will end up in a position to be able to do episode 4? I suspect the spray paint navigation is tied into the quests of episode 4. It is possible even Bleak Inlet might have a part to play in episode 4. I could see Will being rescued by people from Coastal Highway looking for resources at the dam and brought to the Coastal Townsite and that Astrid might plausibly end up there as well. Be interesting to see how plausible their getting to the same general location will be. 😀

I knew about starting a fire to stop a wolf's approach as I learned the hard way in Winter's Embrace (Pilgrim builds up so many bad habits). I have seen playthroughs where the player will always start a fire if confronted by a wolf threat (other than as a need for warmth in Interloper). In one, the player was harvesting a deer and had three wolves roughly as a group growling at him for a very long time. The potency of a lit torch as described implies a near return to the old torch trick back in early access where dropping a torch in front of you would absolutely cause the wolf to halt within easy bow shot. I mention near return because now, with current wolf AI, "aiming" anything at a wolf will cause it to quickly react in one way or another instead of staying stock still. Be interesting if the devs reverted wolves back to something like the torch trick with modifications so things are not exactly the same, and a campfire is no longer an absolute requirement to block a wolf.

The north of the World Map is not at the top of the map where it should be by normal convention. North is oriented more NW using the World Map. My characters have seen the sun rise from roughly the direction of Timberwolf and set roughly in the direction of Mystery Lake. I remember when it was 180 degrees different but that was a long time ago. So @Lohaanmap is (at least to me) oriented wrong, but that's just me. 😁 In other threads, I have said I would not want Ash Canyon to be a deadend region and that still stands though as an interior region that may eventually connect Long Curve in Pleasant Valley to a road heading North (using the pre-dux reference by Jerimiah to Will) I would be okay with that. I just think that because of where Astrid ended up, in Coastal Highway, either Will somehow ends up there or something plucks both of them and puts them into the same region which might well be Perseverance Mills. We'll see in December.

Given the expected game-play plan of Darkwalker, I would expect it to be more in the Challenge category, if it was going to be available year-round, than a regular play mode unless there were major modifications in the way it operated.

The world map has to show all of the existing in-game regions on the map but probably because of display limitations the map had the region names mostly only roughly in the right places and the left (part of Broken Railroad) and right (much of Crumbling Highway and almost all of Desolation Point) edges of the map got cropped off. It is not as if the world map provides sufficient details to navigate in the game world.

I fear the effects of Regional (and Local) Lost and Found. 😁 Regionally, it can mass destroy food supplies and move gear to a distant location and it does it to everyone. No exceptions. 😓 Locally, it can destroy food supplies, but can have spotty coverage so not as bad. I am glad this cataclysm is a rare one but when it happens it can be all-encompassing. 😅

When Bleak Inlet was added, the world map was modified and its visible boundaries contracted. Location names were moved so Broken Railroad, Desolation Point, and Crumbling Highway got pushed in from the margins, which got cropped off in part, and that displaces them as far as where those places were. Attached is an older world map of the game areas, missing Bleak Inlet and Hushed River Valley which came later and it is obvious that the world map was modified. And the sun, as observed from the Camp Office, still rises over Forlorn Muskeg and sets towards the new lookout and Carter Hydro dam. 😁

I have thought that one should be able to walk up to an obstacle like a guard rail and get over it then continue on one's way but that would be a deliberate action and situational. I would expect that one would not be able to run "through" it i.e. run up to it, put ones hands on the obstacle, then vault over it (which would be rather close to "jump" over it) and then continue running. It is annoying that I cannot make my way slowly right over a guard rail, for example, but maybe the details in implementation might be a bit too hard to differentiate between actions. Certainly the devs would be aware of the problems they make for themselves if they have a half-way "jump" like action introduced to the game even if it was for limited situational conditions.

Cleaning the interior of a location, such as the tables and counters of a kitchen, would be a new mechanic. A mechanic I would not mind even if it took a good amount of [game] time to accomplish. That said, I expect that it would be an all or nothing mechanic depending on how all the detritus is scattered about. I want to lay stuff on a table or counter but bowls, plates, cups, office desk mats, etc. mean I have trouble fitting items there. I would not expect to be able to "place" the items I want removed, but let me remove them. A further aspect that can be trouble for the devs would be the open cabinets doors and drawers, drawers on the floor, overturned tables and chairs, etc. which would possibly come in to a "clean up" the place mechanic. It is the difference between Story mode and Survival mode. In the former, the player would come in, live there a while, then go, so a trashed place is no problem. In the latter, the player is going to spend a lot of time there so a trashed place becomes something of a problem. So I don't see a "clean up" mechanic coming around anytime soon.

Might try doing local drive search for user001.64569 or sandbox or sandbox1. While searching for TheLongDark folder should bring up a reference to the folder, the other search terms refer to files that should be in the folder. Do the search, select one of selections and open file location. User001.64569 is your user file and the build number. The save game file would likely be "sandbox1 or sandbox2, etc.". Good luck.

I think on one of my sandboxes I did run across a moose in that vicinity but I didn't try to take it. That was a rather long time ago.

I carried a lot of stuff to the Cannery. Being in Pilgrim I didn't have to worry about the timberwolves, but the long path to get to the cannery pier did wear on me as I did it a good number of times. I did not have anywhere like the cartridge cases you must have had. I had maybe 30 of each type. Up until the devs fixed the aurora for save games where it did not happen, I had been very cautious about using ammunition in this particular sandbox. If you have the time or inclination, you might check the beach combing area by the fallen lighthouse island. If you're lucky, you might be very pleasantly surprised by what washed up. If you're very lucky, what washes up might be repeated regularly. Good luck.

I have not found anything really substantial like a rifle or revolver, but there were times when I could have sworn I had checked a spot only to find a box of matches or something that I apparently missed or had mysteriously/magically spawned. 😀