Serenity

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Is it me or can you no longer open those glass door fridges in stores? I was kind of able to reach through the glass to get something behind, but previously you needed to open the door a bit and reach in the side. Tricky sometimes, but much more immersive.

General tip for moving around when it's cold: drink a hot tea. That buys you some extra time. It's not something you always need to do, but it helps and ingredients for teas are plentiful. It's especially useful on long trips.

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i could't stay warm enough even in the back of a cave? 

The temperature changes throughout the day and night. It's coldest in the early morning and warmest in the late afternoon. Then the temperature drops again and gets colder deeper into the night. Sleep in two hours increments and take a look at the temperature (the one in your bedroll). When you can no longer keep warm you can make a fire. But you usually only need a short one that way, so that saves a lot of fuel.

The temperature up and downs are also relevant for traveling. As already said above don't set out for long trips in the early morning thinking that you need to make most use of the daylight. Instead do something else and travel later when it's warmer. Especially early on with deer clothing you can get as good as one arrow down only in the warmer regions. On a few days even barely warm if you're lucky. 

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forlorn, mystery lake or even where I ended up Broken railroad only got me a couple of items 

BR probably isn't worth it early on. PV, ML, CH and MT generally give a good amount of loot. And the latter three have plenty of shelter where you can warm up.

As said most clothing items are random. Sometimes you get lucky and find a lot of thermal underwear and thin wool sweaters (though some of the those are fixed). In another game you are still looking for your second pair of underpants after hundreds of days. 

For crafted clothing the bunny gear is also a good investment. Easy to get, doesn't take long to make and provides a lot of warmth for that.

Could be the "Placing Anywhere" mod. That removes distance restrictions and also allows you to stack things on top of each other.

Spacing can also change between version depending on if and how they tweak things. I think it has gone back and forth, with the last version allowing closer spacing again. Cans of food or cups of tea were never really an issue though. I was always able to place those next to each other on shelves.

It's fine. Darkwalker was great, but before that I never truly enjoyed the way the special events were implemented. Even then it's something you play just a few times. An update to survival mode definitely has much higher value.

I forgot the other insurance policy in the game: the distress pistol

One of them is a bottom of the Ravine and thus very easy to get. But you still have to remember to have it out, so it wouldn't have helped you

was geting too cold too quickly to harvest what i was killing

Clothing alone won't allow you to harvest anything. It just increases the time before you are freezing. For harvesting stuff you need to make a fire - preferably with a piece of coal.

If you get surprised at short range the bow isn't going to save you. If you want some insurance carry the heavy hammer. It doesn't do much damage, but gets the wolves off you the fastet.

17 hours ago, Dougie said:

The timber wolves are really not my problem, and I used the flashbangs getting to the powerplant. The black wolves are the problem.  I lack the resources. Found lots of revolver bullets, but no revolver, and only a few rifle bullets.

There are several revolvers and rifles. Lots of ammunition. Do the side quests. That takes you to the buildings on the map and gives you caches.

I change regions after a while simply because it gets boring and I need new scenery. I could never stay for hundreds of days in one location.

Yeah, some more goals or unique set pieces would be nice. But the alternative just isn't to stay in house or even one region the whole time.

1 hour ago, mfuegemann said:

Try to forget about loot tables. It just takes so much off the experience. I do hate the guaranteed spawning places for matches or other loot - You are not able to forget them, once You know

I wouldn't recommend learning them inside out. Like "If X spawns here, Y is there". That's boring. But you can memorize the possible spawn locations for certain items without correlating them with each other and still have fun. Over time you notice most of their locations anyways.

The only reason I even brought it up it up is to explain why things aren't always in the same place between different runs.

1 hour ago, Corso said:

Where do the sleeping bags spawn on loper? Not ready to face a bear yet

It depends. There are four different loot tables.

PV: the cave at Mystic River picnic area. The cave above the rural store (right of the river. not the one near the bear cave)

ML: Camp Office, ice fishing hut near lonely lake cabin, cave in Winding River, hunter's blind at Alan's cave

DP: up the pipe at Hibernia's, Scruffy's cave

Most of them are in fairly obvious locations. Even when you have one in some obscure cave there will be another one at a main location

A great early base is the hydro dam in Mystery Lake. It has a nice cave nearby you can use for cabin fever risk (which should only ever be an issue when you craft for a very long time). And there are tons of deer carcasses around it. More than you need for your gear. For forging you can make a trip to FM for a few days.

TWM is one of the best starts you can get. Two packs of matches if you go via the three way cave instead of directly to the hut. A guaranteed tool of some kind. PV has some great loot too. After checking the major locations there off to ML.

You usually don't need a fire in the back of a cave. Sleep only for 2-3 hours in case a blizzard hits. Poor clothing + cold nights can be problematic for a few hours deep in the night. Or a blizzard might hit. But usually it's fine.

Also, do you have actual cabin fever or only cabin fever risk? When the risk appears you have plenty of time to prepare and spend some time outside.

 didn't think that was even possible and maybe it was a bug but damn it felt good

Arrow damage varies with the body part you hit, your archery skill and there is also some chance involved via critical hits. One hit kills on a moose are very lucky early on, simple because your overall damage isn't that high. But not impossible with a head shot. Later on you can usually reliably one shot deer and wolves (but not always) and have a very good chance to take down moose in one or two hits, even when you don't hit the head.

15 hours ago, Gustaaf said:

I would pay for a REDUX version, where they reboot the story line with Episode 4 cinematics and the like. 

Waste of resources. They already re-did it once and it took ages. That time it was worth it (and it went beyond aesthetics), but I don't want them to do it again. Story mode is something you play 1-3 times. I really don't want to do it again. Touching up the maps for survival mode is a far better investment.

Just keep running. There is no time to look at anything anyways. If you stop and try to figure things out you'll die. It's foggy, but it's clear enough that can see where the tunnel goes. Eventually you get a pocket of fresh air.

You can also use flares for those sections and keep the lantern for the clear areas

The wolf behavior is terrible, they scare easily.

The new noisemakers work very well and there are plenty of cans and gunpowder. The revolver also works. Just don't try to kill all of them. It it's pointless because they immediately respawn.

Custom settings aren't always cutting it because they aren't granular enough. Especially in regards to loot. There is a gigantic gap between Stalker where loot is everywhere and Interloper where it's very rare. But you can't select anything between.

22 minutes ago, Corso said:

I've heard that more than once now - looks like I've made an early lopper mistake - why's Garage not the best option?

It's not necessarily a mistake. Don't take everyone's preferences as gospel. You can live there for weeks. You can even use it earlier on to hunt wolves for your coat. It's just that the Fishing Camp is safer.

Contrary to the popular story, the town site isn't crawling with wolves on Interloper. They mostly stay out on the ice and every now and then one or two will take a stroll through town. The problem is that this is completely unpredictable and that the sight lines are really bad. Lots of snow berms, small hills and other features that can hide them. So you always have to be careful when leaving and approaching the town as you don't know where they are exactly. And cooking attracts them - but that's also true of other places, including Jackrabbit's Island.

It's risky, but it can be managed. Cull the wolves and it can be peaceful enough. Same in an other place really. It's perfectly fine to live in wolf infested places like the Cannery or Milton as long as you kill them regularly and don't get too complacent while they're away. Especially with a high archery skill later on when you can reliably one shot almost all wolves.

Sure, from a purely risk based assessment other places are better. But ultimately it's a matter of taste and how comfortable you are playing with the wolves. They aren't that hard to deal with if you know what you're doing. If the wolves aren't annoying you too much, you don't have to shun the place.

10 hours ago, ajb1978 said:

What else would it be?

The abject stupidity in this forum is mindboggling sometimes.

No, it couldn't be that the wolves were placed (in)conveniently in all locations you have to pass at least once or twice. It couldn't be the broken timberwolf behavior where they constantly change between being afraid of you and growling. It couldn't be that they don't roam far if at all and always camp in the exact same spot. It couldn't be that they don't occasionally de-spawn to introduce some unpredictability. It couldn't be that even if you kill them they immediately respawn. It couldn't be that the whole experience thus just felt extremely artificial and scripted, whereas in survival mode it's usually far more organic.

I mostly enjoy dealing the wolves in survival mode. But there wasn't a single instance in Ep 4 where I enjoyed an encounter with a wolf. I can handle them fine. It just wasn't fun.

And people miss the point again. Why is it whenever someone brings this up people think that it's just about difficulty or not being able to handle the wolves? It's such a stupid conclusion to draw.

The flowing water was really nice.Also the lack of a loading screen in some locations like the guard room or the infirmary.

World modeling is definitely improving. I hope that some day they'll go over old maps and apply some of the later experience to tune them up a bit. Another example the improved lighting in Ash Canyon. With the loading screens that isn't possible everywhere (as the interior doesn't always match the outside), but some places could be adapted. 

You used that door previously when you went from the power plant back to the prison.

12 hours ago, Lord of the Long Dark said:

 Quonset is a death trap.  There is no advantage to staying there. 

It does have some things going for it. Lots of storage (which is something that's lacking at the fishing camp). Lots of sticks. A possible moose spawn that's very easy to hunt. Indoor crafting. Stuff to break down in the houses. The coal mine is close by.

It's dangerous, yes, but manageable. The wolves aren't always in town. Most of the time they are out on the ice. It adds some unpredictability, but you can also just kill them and then you'll have peace for some time. I think it's a nice balance of risk and reward. People need to try and make up their own mind if it's worth it.

It's Stalker where I avoid the place. Not Interloper. One Interloper game I actually made great use of the wolves by using them to make my two wolf coats. Otherwise I often commute between it and the fishing camp.

2 hours ago, SladeyGaming said:

 Wintermute IS the tutorial essentially so yes there are some mechanics like the sleeping mechanic that need to stick around to help new players.

I think that's really bad game design. And I'm speaking about gaming general, not just TLD. Where the whole story is treated as an introduction to some other mode. It really hurts games. It also doesn't make sense for TLD since story mode was actually supposed to be the main attraction of the game. And survival mode the side show. That's not how it turned out.

And in the case of TLD there is plenty of hand holding and explanations in the first two episodes that not every setting has to be so easy. A new person can handle not being able to sleep. They can pass time instead (which burns more calories). Also, there are several difficulty modes. Easy settings are perfectly fine on the lowest. But why is Hardened Survivor tuned down so much?

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That said I do kind of agree that the severity of the timberwolves mixed in with the normal wolves at times was a bit much 

The timberwolves aren't hard or intense. Just super annoying. When I said their behavior is bad I didn't mean that they were too difficult. They  constantly change between growling and threatening to attack and then running away. Often you can even walk right up to them and they will just flee. 

Don't mistake this as a complaint about difficulty. It really isn't. It's more about immersion. And that wolves just aren't fun to interact with if they behave like that. Survival mode also has occasional issues with the animal AI and it also hurts the game. But it's usually not this bad.

It's the same with the wolf packs being placed where they are. Always on the road between objectives. That's not hard. Just annoying, gamey and predictable. Sure, I can just use a noise maker to scare them away and walk on. But after the second or third time doing it in exactly the same situation that stops being fun.