UTC-10

@Armiora Welcome to the club. The issue of interior lighting has been going back and forth for a long time. I remember way back when it was dark as heck inside and people complained it was too dark. Then was lightened up so that the outlines of interiors could be dimly seen (as a kind of blue light) and people complained it was too lighted. Then it got darker again. Then it got lighter again. Now it is darker again. It may well lighten up in the hotfix or update until the followup where it may then darken again. There is no way to make an interior visible if the game algorithm says it is too dark to see. Running up the brightness on the monitor or even the game settings tends to not make a big difference. The screen gets brighter, turns a tint of green, and everything remains invisible in the dark. The collateral effect of changing game settings is that now when there is light, it is all very bright. Not unlike, wearing low-light goggles then entering a well lit situation. Me, I cope as best I can. In places I go to regularly - Camp Office, Farm House in Pleasant Valley, the Quonset garage in Coastal Highway, etc. - I will keep an eye on how I am oriented when I enter (when there was light to see) so that when I come in when it is dark, I can use my movement keys and move in a squared pattern not wandering around. Interior landmarks help too, even the visible windows. Despite all that I still get lost and disoriented. Light my lantern and find I am in a corner, looking up at the ceiling. Sigh.

Since reloading ammunition is now a fact, if a reloading kit was introduced, as an incentive for the player to use the ammunition work bench, using the kit might always produce slightly lower condition ammunition (i.e. the game treats the kit as imposing a -1 level on your skill, with level 1 being the lowest anyway) so even level 5 gunsmithing is equivalent to level 4 when using the kit. Hmmm, Pilgrim and Voyager -1, Stalker -2, Interloper (if firearms were custom allowed) -2 or -3. Just a thought. I had not imagined that Hinterland would introduce the ammunition work bench which would incorporate bullet casting, powder manufacture, and reloading cartridge cases all in one spot. It is kind of like the forge on the Riken when Desolation Point was added.

I had thought that Hinterland would introduce a reloading kit with all the dies and measures as well as a components kit that contained bullets, powder and primers. Even ignoring the issue of primers, a components kit would allow for high quality ammunition because of the factory produced modern components and there could be a separate line similar to what was introduced in EP where the bullets and gunpowder could be crafted. The component kit yields 100% ammo, while the hand-made components, while easier and more available, would take time to get to 100%.

Hinterland would have to decide that food preservation, which is conspicuously absent from the game mechanics, is necessary for general game play. For story mode, it really wasn't necessary and for survival mode, it was up to the player what he or she does with food management. I think that, for the time being, they would want to concentrate on getting story mode done and giving incremental things to survival mode, rather than introduce what would be a brand new game mechanic, but they might surprise us yet.

Ravine has no structures in it to place the regional lost and found box. Hence it went to where the player can enter the zone. Now, in Broken Railroad, where there is the Maintenance Shed (or the Hunting Lodge) the regional lost and found box ended up at the tunnel from Forlorn Muskeg. Which required a lot of effort to move stuff back to the Maintenance Yard or further on to the Hunting Lodge. I can understand about stacking, but no stacking might be a concession to the possibilities of people who gather a lot of same kind stuff. In my regional lost and found boxes (I abbreviate as RLF with LLF for the lost and found inside an interior cave/mine, a building, etc.) I think I can end up with a stack of sticks amounting to 2,000+ (300+ kilos). I'd hate to hit by accident, Transfer All, and end up crushed to death under the pile of sticks suddenly in my backpack. What a novel way to end a run. Death by sticks.

I don't think I came across EP-specific drops in Carter Hydro. I would not be surprised to find stump remover and dusting sulfur there but I was disappointed and not surprised to find nothing like that there. In searching Mystery Lake, Forlorn Muskeg and Broken Railroad, I think I have two bags of dusting sulfur, no stump remover, and six lead plates. I think I have more in Pleasant Valley but didn't bring it because I figured I'd find more in the above named places.

In Forlorn Muskeg, the regional lost and found box should be by the tunnel mouth to/from Mystery Lake. In Broken Railroad it should be at the tunnel mouth to/from Forlorn Muskeg.

I have found deer and wolves (I play Pilgrim) run in rather strange patterns. They also tend to get 'hung up', i.e. mill around, when they reach an impassable place like a rock face. This can be extremely frustrating compared to before. I guess that with the increased availability of ammunition that the devs decided they could make us have to use it more. Big game needs to be pretty close to the building if it is to be caught up in the respawn of the landscape when you go inside and coming back out. At the farmstead in PV, the bear has to be closer than the car that is parked there for me to expect it to still be there if I were fetching a rifle. Any further out and it becomes iffy.

I have checked the Hunting Lodge and the only things I am taking from Broken Railroad would be the one bag of sulfur and one book on gunsmithing. I also got a car battery from the car parked near the Hunting Lodge, so six lead plates from harvesting it. None of the Breyerhauser trucks, nor the pickup truck by the Lodge, had car batteries. I might have expected that the Maintenance Shed would have had a few car batteries in the storage area or scattered about the shed but there were none. Luck of the draw I guess.

Excepting a more thorough going over of Carter, I have not found any gunpowder components in Mystery Lake. This includes the once over on Carter, checks on the trailers near it, hunters blinds, Camp Office, Lake Cabins, Ice fishing huts, Trappers, Lone Cabin, Logging Camp, and the prepper cache. Nor have I found any in Forlorn Muskeg though I only looked at Poachers and Old Spence. I did find sulfur in the Maintenance shed in Broken Railroad and haven't yet checked the Hunting Lodge. I play on Pilgrim.

This should have been posted in the Survival mode forum. On the Steam forum, someone made several rounds of revolver and rifle ammunition. I would think the limiting factor at this point would be the number of cartridge cases you have.

A car battery can be harvested into six lead plates, weighing 0.25 kg each, and each plate is enough for six bullets. So a battery should be able to supply up to 36 bullets. Dusting sulfur is 0.1 kg, stump remover is 0.75 kg, and two charcoal is 0.20 kg for a total combined weight of 1.05 kg. Now in the release video I noticed that the can of gunpowder of about 1 pound so call that 0.50 kg (50% of the weight of the ingredients). At 0.01 kg of powder per round (revolver or rifle makes no difference), making a can of powder gives enough powder for 50 rounds. The limiting factor would be the cartridge casings. I haven't gotten to Bleak Inlet and haven't made ammo. I was toying with the numbers and watching the release video since it did talk about reloading ammo.

I suspect that they thought that Lost and Found would sweep it all up and nobody would be putting everything back in the same locations considering the limited carry capacity we have. But they should have said something. Ravine Basin was an unlikely place for anyone to leave any quantity of gear since it was a deadend, but Forlorn Muskeg was not as isolated with three exits to other regions from it. It might have been better, in this limited instance, to fix the bridge in Broken Railroad and have the track/path lead down to a coastal area (Bleak Inlet) but that's just me. I lost a house full of gear at (formerly) Crossroads when the house was removed and replaced with the foreclosed houses. It wasn't a disaster for that sandbox, but it was a surprise. I had plenty of margin to cover the loss. Oh well.

As for whether there was lost and found with this update, it looks like maybe not. I have only been moving around Pleasant Valley and nothing has changed that I can tell other than I now have three bags of sulfur and two cans of stump remover and six lead plates. @stay puft I would guess that if your gear in that cave was not swept up into the Forlorn Muskeg Lost and Found, when episode 3 went live, then it sat in the cave and was lost (for now) when the EP update occurred. I have generally found Lost and Found to be pretty indiscriminate about sweeping up everything outside into a Lost and Found box so I am surprised you lost gear. Hope you get your stuff back.

Sorry to hear that. I wonder if Hinterland ran lost and found again. It may not be automatic. I can check my sandbox once the game updates. I think I'll bring up one sandbox that I went through all the regions I had previously visited to put things back to rights and see if new stuff has appeared in them.

I assume that you checked the tunnel from Mystery Lake? On my grand tour (where I was getting things arranged again following Lost and Found), the Forlorn Muskeg regional lost and found (RLF) box was at the tunnel from Mystery Lake. When I went to Broken Railroad, I found the RLF at the tunnel from Forlorn Muskeg. PITA to move all (or most of) that stuff from the tunnel back to the Maintenance Yard and the Hunting Lodge. I would have thought the RLF would be at the Maintenance Shed door. There was a local lost and found (LLF) box inside the Shed door and in the Hunting Lodge.

Probably need a microwave though perhaps a controlled electrical food warmer/oven might do the trick. If the devs would just let us have one.

I play Pilgrim and every time I see wolves and deer, I try to get the wolves to get a deer even when unnecessary. I don't let the carcass go to waste, I harvest it almost always fully. I also pick up sticks, lots of sticks, and break branches to get more sticks. and more sticks and... arrgghhhh!

The elevator at this level seems to be the lower end of the mine. It would seem unlikely that even a tidal wave would do more than momentarily flood the entrance tunnel. Maybe climate change in a couple centuries of sea level rise and shoreline subsidence might start to threaten the mine.

The entrance to the new lowest part of Cinder Hills mine is located in the vicinity of Log Sort. It is not hard to spot from the highway.

With Lost and Found largely wiping out 0% meat and fish and canned food, there may now be an actual case for an alternate means of preserving food unless how it functions is modified. It might not be salted meats, but things like smoked meat and such might be worthwhile to implement. I doubt that they would introduce a processed product that had no scent effect unless there was some other property that offset that, but we'll have to wait and see.

This is probably marginal for this thread. Lost and found did IMO a pretty decent job overall, I got a few more rounds of revolver ammo, a fire striker I missed somewhere and a few other things as well as not losing any gear that I noticed, but it had its (for players) unexpected consequences. Question: Was the destruction of masses of 0% food foreseen and intended? This was pretty acute when conventional wisdom was store food (meat and fish) outside for maximum preservation. Under current mechanics, one could not store them in a container, which would not have been swept up by lost and found, because when the food reached 0% condition it would disappear. Question: Given that the result was either expected or unexpected, is there any thought about how it may need (or not) to be modified in this regard? I did fine myself wishing that lost and found didn't essentially consolidate all the outside stuff from all over Pleasant Valley into a lost and found box outside the farm house, the vast bulk of stuff, and the (formerly) crossroads store.

I did get a few more revolver rounds that lost and found found for me. Even a fire striker that I must have missed somewhere, so it was a mix of good and bad. One thing that has been bad was at formerly the Crossroads where a crossroads house was replaced by the Thomson's Crossing foreclosed houses. The items I had in the house are gone since there was no place for a lost and found box to appear (the location was gone). It was unexpected and unwelcome but not a disaster. I am sure Hinterland could recover my items but I expect their hands are full coping with the inevitable problems of the new episode.

Being able to carry a person was very likely a game-play decision for story mode. It just glossed over whether Astrid could actually physically carry a person. The issue of being able to move an animal carcass was addressed by the act of quartering a carcass which allowed a carcass to be split into bags that could be carried (i.e. within the existing game mechanics). That's almost certainly not going to change significantly.

In general, yep, all that bear and moose and venison and fish is now gone. I would not be surprised to hear that some people didn't lose their meat stockpiles, but that would be more the exception than the rule. Lost and Found has done one thing to me. I am now generally putting cooked meat and even raw meat inside because, while they decay faster, the way lost and found works they may survive an update, be onsite not way off in some other place, and if they do go away I am no worse off. A possibly unexpected consequence to lost and found, which seemed to do the job, but...