UpUpAway95

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Posts posted by UpUpAway95

  1. Thank you.  Love that we'll be able to harvest rabbits and ptarmigan with our hands again.  Losing a little meat in the process seems like a very reasonable compromise.  (Still waiting for the update to download so I can try it out as I've been away for a bit).

    • Upvote 1
  2. 4 minutes ago, Only The Lonely said:

    UpUpAway95 same with harvesting.  As your skill increases the time shortens... making you have to harvest more to gain the exp.  Also, my thought is they already have the mechanic worked out, and they would need to apply it to cooking... although I am not a developer or programmer and I'm sure that is way easier said than done.

    Yes, it could be done (not really saying it couldn't) and I do see where you're coming from.  Still, I think they would have gone with weight a long time ago if that's the direction they were wanting to head with it all... and I still think "forced quartering" just now "fits" better since we've always needed a tool to quarter and we now need tools to straight up harvest anyways.  I have noticed that they've also added a maximum time you can spend harvesting a carcass in one go if you're not actively keeping it thawed by a fire and the carcass shows that it's freezing as you go.  No more harvesting a freshly killed bear with one's hand for 12 hours straight (which was possible if one wanted to take that sort of extreme chance on the weather).  Now, the harvesting will turn red when you exceed the 'freezing time."  Quartering now just makes more sense.

    • Upvote 2
  3. On 12/11/2023 at 5:58 AM, UpUpAway95 said:

    I'm starting to think the more limiting factor on this run is more likely to be matches rather than the life of the prybar (as is the case with many of my 50-day runs in one zone (unless a mag lens is found).  I haven't got a lot of clothing, so I really have to pick and choose what days I can fish - foggy is best.  Fortunately, the bear seems to be AWOL this run so far.

    Also, I wanted to add that I do know I can harvest rabbits, etc. with the hacksaw; but part of the challenge is that I'm only using that tool for cutting wood and, if needeed, additional scrap metal for fish hooks.  The more limiting factor on making tackle in Broken Railroad, of course, is not scrap metal (if one does have a hacksaw) but gut is limited to the number of prop deer in the zone, which usually runs about a total of 8 and then one prop wolf can also spawn down below the broken bridge.

    It's turning out to be a more interesting run than I thought it would be.  Scurvy, however, should not be a factor with the amount of fish in the diet.

    The answer, I think, to my question of how long is going to be much longer than I originally thought.

    OK, I'm 22 days into this "challenge" and ready to do some extrapolations rather than continue the run:

    I began cutting fish holes when my prybar condition was 94% (due to opening lockers and the car trunk in Broken Railroad with it).  It loses 2% condition for each hole and is now at 80%; meaning I've cut 7 holes in 22 days.

    With the weather settings (pilgrim level) in this file; and can usually fish for a full day when I fish (say, 8 hours).  I started out averaging about 4 fish in that time but now, with leveling up a big, I catch around 6 per go.  This is ample to keep up with calories and, since, most of the fish I can are whitefish (with a moderate vita-C content when cooked), the diet should also keep scurvy at bay.  By the way, I have been, for the most part, maintaining the well fed bonus as well).

    I've not been using lures or tip-ups.  I did use cut up some small Goldeye I caught into bait instead of cooking them.

    I've also used 8 matches (out of my total of 48 found in the zone - I found a couple of boxes after I had missed on my first clearing of the zone).

    So, in conclusion, I could certainly keep this file going well beyond the 50-day mark without ever leaving Broken Railroad.  Of course, the demands on resources with interloper weather and the lower fish spawn chance would probably make this run a real struggle to maintain for 50-days in that small zone; but it should be easily doable in larger zones where larger fish can be caught (like Coastal Highway).  It's probably not practical at all in Ash Canyon, where there is simply insufficient scrap metal to keep up with the loss of hooks due to line breakage (although breakage gets less common as one levels up fishing).

    With wolves turned right off (to avoid the temptation to use "wolf kills") and the bear not spawning, predators were a total non-issue in this run.  No bunnies or ptarmigan were harmed in the making of this test.😀

  4. 6 minutes ago, Only The Lonely said:

    I definitely think that having to view a harvest animation every time consumes a lot of real time.  I can understand getting rid of the micro harvest to level up cooking, as I am sure that is not something the developers had planned.  Something about being at level 5 cooking on day 3 or so just doesn't feel right when it takes over 100 days to max out some of the other skills.  But, being able to set what you want to harvest and it's applicable time makes sense to me.  If the other skills matched what you were able to do with harvesting, then you should be able to partially mend a coat by stopping the task (increasing the percentage by 1 perhaps), and the same with gun cleaning, sharpening, reading books in 1 minute increments, etc.  Harvesting is the only one that has allowed you speed through cooking as a 1-1 ratio of experience.  

    In my humble opinion, cooking should be the same as harvesting... total time.  That would equalize the skill to match the others.  Harvesting experience is calculated by total time harvesting, not by amount harvested; you receive no additional benefit from using a knife vs. your hands - and some contend to only ever use your hands when possible because it takes longer and levels the skill faster.  Cooking should be the same... total time cooking, not by item.  Especially with all of the new recipes that can take over an hour.  If you cooked 75 teas you could be at level three in about 12 in-game hours +/- (I know there are other factors like water needed and supplies gathered).

    I think you should get more cooking experience from cooking a 1KG steak vs a 0.1KG steak, and perhaps more if you use a pan or pot vs. just the cooking surface.  And if you are implementing a recipe, that could factor more as well.

    Sorry, not to rant on about cooking, but I really do feel that it is the root when it comes to micro harvesting and harvesting in general.  If you received cooking experience through time and not by item, microharvesting would be a non-issue in almost all cases.

    Leveling up by weight is simpler than time, since times shorten as you level up.  Basing it on weight has been proposed many times though and it still hasn't happened.

    • Upvote 1
  5. 10 minutes ago, artmunki said:

    You make good points. I started the Buried Echoes update in a run that was already past 600 days, and I only play one run at a time, so obviously I can only speak from that experience. If you're finding roughly the same numbers as before in fresh runs, I guess it maybe isn't just a simple boost to spawn numbers - something else is going on here. And yeah, that could totally just be a sorta refresh artefact from the mere fact that there's been a significant update, tho I've only found new maple saplings - no new birch anywhere - which is kinda why I think it's tied to the travois somehow.

    That said, the fact that they opted to let existing saves continue without scurvy being worked in does kinda go against that idea too - if they could boost harvestables for the travois, they could do the same for scurvy, right? I play voyageur tho so I don't really go hard on mushrooms & cattails, so I wouldn't really notice if those had been refreshed too, but my current run is still free of the scurvy affliction. So yeah, still none the wiser.

    I totally agree about Transfer Pass being a new enough region that maybe they just decided to add some in there anyway, but that doesn't really account for the others I've found. So far I've found those three new/extra maple saplings in Transfer Pass, a stand of 3 or 4 near Justy's Hovel (which I've found in previous runs, but definitely weren't there on this one until the update - haven't been back around much more of the Airfield yet as I was just looking for the new link to the Zone), and 3 or 4 singles in Pleasant Valley, but I haven't found any yet in Ash Canyon (the only other region I've searched so far) so it may not be island-wide. And I haven't found any re-spawned saplings that I'd already nabbed either - so far they've all been new spawns at different sites. I'm gonna keep looking around to see if I can find any more (mostly just cuz it's always nice to give yourself a project in longer games tbh), but we're clearly not talking about a lot of new saplings, so it may not really be all that noticeable in a fresh run.

    The Airfield is also a new zone and they were "breaking" into those two anyway to create the entrances to the ZoC, right?

    Again, scurvy has bugs in it (acknowledge by Raph) - would you really risk cratering someone's 600-day save with a "known issue" or leave it out of those saves to ensure you don't?  They can always add it in or mods can do that, but if they added it and the bugs did their damage, it wouldn't be a simple thing to undo.

  6. The more I think about it, the more I favour "forced quartering" of larger game (including deer) with a shorter time to quarter a deer being implemented (with the appropriate animations).  Then, allowing unfrozen/thawed quarter bags to be harvested by hand as before.  The travois makes hauling the quartered bags to a safe location much easier than before and we can no longer harvest them directly into steaks by hand when fresh killed anyways (except if killed by a wolf), so there really is no reason to attempt to carve even a deer into steaks in the field as long as the time it takes to do it is adjusted/shortened a bit.  Since the amount of meat of the ravaged prop deer is minimal, harvesting for a couple of steaks makes sense there.  This just leaves the deer killed by wolves in a bit of a limbo.  I think the amount of meat left on the deer could be the deciding factor whether the player will be allowed to harvest steaks or be forced to quarter (say, under 3 kg = allowed to harvest steaks directly and, if still unfrozen, by hand).

    People have found a way to micro-harvest already, so there's apparently no stopping the determined (other than removing the OP benefit of reaching cooking Level 5) - and then some would probably still do it.  I don't and I may not "like" that others can - but what they do to "cheese" their own runs is totally up to them.

  7. 11 hours ago, artmunki said:

    A game world of this size is always likely to have a few spawn issues, especially when the developers are in the midst of adding a bunch of new stuff to the game. Normally it's easily overlooked, because in most games the spawns are a lot more random and numerous than in TLD, but in this game resources are sorta more precious, which can make it more obvious when something is missing.

    These new saplings already have me convinced that they're doing some degree of tweaking to the resource spawns anyway, and there are some other multi-spawn issues around too - see the barb's gun glitch thread in the general tab, and I'm sure we've all seen multi-spawning sticks and coal all over the place - so it's no surprise if a few things aren't turning up as intended as well. Hinterland seem quite a diligent bunch of peeps tho, so I have little doubt these little annoyances will be ironed out in time.

    I'm still not convinced your new saplings are all that new.  As I said, players have been noting additional cat tails spawning into areas they've previously cleared for ages, and doing updates has often tended to reset areas a bit.  The maple counts overall, so far, in the areas I've cleared have been about the same as previously to the update and a couple of maple in an area where you didn't notice them before is not conclusive evidence of them intentionally increasing the numbers of maple in the game in order to incorporate the travois.  Granted,  I haven't been doing loot tests in Transfer Pass since I'm not that familiar with that zone; but one should also cosnider that it is a newer zone and they may have just decided it needed some tweaking overall.

    4 hours ago, James Hickok said:

    Well i still havent tried the update. If that is the case i really dont understand the logic here. From what ive seen in YT rosehips and mushrooms are not the only thing to counter scurvy and its not that a big of a deal as I suspected. Guess they had they reasons why not add it. The thing that bugs me the most is thst they said NO MORE save wipes. It feels like a save wipe for me. 5 exactly. Ofc ill make new ones but it takes time and if they wipe again i dont know if I will continue playing the game. Time wasted is the worst thing. We will see how they handle next update. 

    Still going there on my hardest custom save would be suicide. Ill make a new loper run Again, collect all the stuff from the world again, do the tales again and go check ZoC then. Maybe I will see it by the end of the year. 

    It's NOT a save wipe.  Your save is still playable without using the time capsule.  In addition, there's a bug with scurvy right now that causes it to not activate in some new saves (i.e. Raph mentions that if you set your starting load out to "very high" in custom, it won't kick in).  Clearly they are still working on it, but wanted a release before their Christmas break, so they were cautious - not wanting to crater long-term save files with a still "buggy" affliction.  I agree with their decision.  Also, I don't think it will be very hard for the modders to figure out a way to add it into old saves - easier, I think, than it would be to figure out how to eliminate it if HL had arbitrarily added to all saves (bugs and all).

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  8. 1 hour ago, artmunki said:

    I did find it in my last run, but the Hunter's Revolver didn't show up that time. I'm not much of a gun-user in this game tho, so I don't mind too much.

    In my saves, I'm finding the variants, but not the regular Hunting Rifle.  The only place I've found one of those so far is, very occasionally, in my Broken Railroad starts.  Despite multiple quick runs checking loot spawns in Ash Canyon, Mystery Lake, Forlorn Muskeg, and Mountain Town, I've yet to find one in any of those zones and the spawns in BRR seem much rarer than before the Frontier Comforts update.

    In BRR, on runs with Baseline Resources higher than "Low" (i.e. not interloper settings), there has been in the past a guaranteed spawn of a hatchet and a knife.  Lately, though, I've had several starts where the hatchet (and the campfire it used to spawn beside) is missing altogether.  I've also had a couple of spawns now where the knife is missing (although the sitting corpse it spawned beside has been there).  That corpse for ages has always spawned in 1 of 3 possible locations, which it is still doing; but when the corpse spawns in the cave near the hunter's blind, the knife has been missing every time.  Whether it's spawning underground there, I don't know.

    There is definitely some sort of spawning bug occurring - maybe several different bugs - maybe related to each other and maybe not.  HL has some testing and debugging work to do.  I hope they can sort this all out.

    • Upvote 1
  9. 1 hour ago, JMK said:

    I don't want to read this topic too closely (spoilers) but my understanding is that in order to have its full features, you have to start a new run ?

    As @Leeanda said, scurvy will not kick in on old save files.  There is also a bug where if won't kick in, even on a new save file, if your Starting Gear Allocation is set to "Very High."  This is noted in the announcement under known issues (which you may want to read through regardless, since there are various bugs happening right now that HL was aware of before release and noted in that announcement).

    • Upvote 2
  10. 5 minutes ago, artmunki said:

    I actually got a second Miner's Flashlight somewhere in the Zone - down in the mine I think, tho I can't recall where I left it. Come to think of it, I'm not sure where I left the one I found previously either, but it's not something I'm too worried about anyway. I'm only on my second run since Tales dropped, and both times there's been one unique item missing, so maybe that's a thing. Too early for me to say tho, obviously - 2 is a useless sample-size.  ^_^

    or some items are spawning under the terrain or the bug varies on different platforms.  Who knows?  HL will just have to keep testing it to figure out what's wrong.

    I have noticed some Cat tails spawning in after I've cleared the area previous (i.e. spawning in late).  I've seen this occur in Fallout 4, where looting and emptying drawers seems to unburdened an area such that if you go back immediately, drawers that were not emptied, but previously empty will suddenly contain loot.  This is before a total respawn in that area occurs.

  11. 24 minutes ago, artmunki said:

    I already seem to be missing the Curator's Rifle on this run, so I'm not getting my hopes up for anything. Still, can't hurt to have a look while I'm wandering around anyway.  ^_^

    I started two different custom runs in Ash Canyon after the update and after reading the post about the Curator's Rifle being missing.  In my runs, it was there both times (on the ledge near Wolf's Jaw Overlook).

  12. More information on scurvy and the vita-C amounts in fish:  It appears that my first observations may have been a little in error (not sure yet).  However, I have definitely confirmed that Fresh Lake Whitefish are listed as a "Major" source of vitamin-C when raw and drop to a "Moderate" source after being cooked.  The Smallmouth Bass, however, is a "Major" source when raw and stays a "Major" source after being cooked.  The Goldeye and Burdot are not sources of Vita-C.

    As I recall in my previous post, I noted that one o the fish I found in a fridge in Milton (on an earlier run) was a "Minor" source when I found it raw.  It was in very poor condition.  I thought it was a Lake Whitefish, which would mean that the Vita-C content diminishes as the fish decays (at least while raw).  I can't confirm this yet since I'm struggling in this "hands only" run (in Broken Railroad) to acquire enough fish to allow some of them to decay.  (I am holding my own on calories, but just barely so far).  If I get more fish, I'll allow a Lake Whitefish to rot when raw and check the Vita-C content.

    Meanwhile, one should not assume that all fish are major Vita-C sources.

    • Upvote 1
  13. 14 hours ago, GuardianCreature said:

    old fashioned flour mills often run along river courses with a water wheel to power them, i could see something like that being added to the game eventually, you wouldnt even need the aurora to run it so long as you kept it mostly free of ice. considering it seems to be a relitively modern comunity without a big focus on farming though i doubt we'll see any flour mills old fashioned or otherwise. 

    a lumber mill on the other hand...

    Lumber mills are more likely in most places on GBI, I agree.  However, Pleasant Valley is clearly a farm with several bales of straw lying out in the field, as is Spence's Homestead and Paradise Meadows Farm.  Surely, they sold their crops somewhere for processing (most likely into flour) since there is little evidence of a significant livestock operation (i.e. feedlot with lots of corrals, cattle squeezes, and such) at any of them (although PV does have a barn and probably did have some livestock, but likely not enough to consume the crops from all of the fields evident in that zone). 

    Yes, the old-fashioned flour mills used water wheels, but there are more modern ones that don't; hence my suggestion for an  aurora powered one instead (just to keep up with a prevalent theme in the game).

    • Upvote 1
  14. 1 hour ago, deviro_verity said:

    I personally want all the challenges Hinterland can throw at me - it would've been great if the scurvy mechanic started on any existing save just the way cabin fever is on new interloper saves (I saw others suggest this). I'm also one of those 1 save Andys and I'm not starting a new run for a new affliction, I would rather enable it with a mod.

    There you go - you'll probably have the opportunity to use a mod to add it to your save - just like numerous players currently back up their saves.

  15. 2 hours ago, JackTrysGames said:

    "...so think of this as part of a condition maintenance regimen, and less like a magic health pack. Like most things in The Long Dark, there are no quick-fix solutions- it's only through careful planning and maintenance that you can hope to survive over the long term."

    -The Long Dark Devs (Steadfast Ranger Update, Birch Bark Tea)

     

    And then they added the Prepper's Pie, a food item that instantly-restores 25% of your condition like a magic health pack, and the Peach/Rose Hip Pies, which restore roughly 40% of your Fatigue in one hit- a perfect quick-fix solution.

    It's really nothing new - The emergency stim (the quintessential "magic health pack") was been in the game long before Birch Bark Tea (15% instant condition restoration and unlimited stamina for 1 minute).  They were/are in a very limited supply.  Birch bark was renewable, so they made it act over time.  Now, years later, they decided to add something faster acting but still not really unlimited - yet at least.  Not sure what your point is here.  I'm sure that devs, like everyone, can change their thinking over time.

    • Upvote 2
  16. 1 hour ago, artmunki said:

    My current run is somewhere north of 600 days, and I know for certain that there were only a handful of unharvested saplings of any type left on the island, and I know exactly where most of them were. I'll happily concede that it's possible that one or two of the additional maples I've found since escaping the Zone were just in out-of-the way spots I hadn't passed, which I only found now because I'm making a point of looking in those remote spots (only searched PV so far, but I've really just started looking), but there have been a few on regular routes I walk too, and the 3 I found in Transfer Pass were completely new to me - never seen any saplings in that transit region before now, and one of them was right there outside the cave I woke in when the update dropped. Kinda took me by surprise tbh, and there's absolutely no way I missed it before. So yeah, there are definitely new maple saplings about since the update, and I'm just trying to figure out the nature of the change behind the scenes.

    I totally agree that there were already plenty of saplings of both kinds to be found about GBI, and beachcombing kinda makes them effectively infinite, but that doesn't change the fact that maple saplings are a valued resource in the game, making the travois an expensive item to craft, so it does make sense that more might be added with the update. I'd actually expected the travois to require a moose skin to build, but now I've seen how quickly it wears out I'm not surprised they went for deer instead.

    OK then.  They may have added some.  I haven't noticed any difference overall in the individual zones I've examined since the update.

    • Upvote 1
  17. 1 hour ago, xanna said:

    Interloper spawn settings for plants is the same as all the other modes. It's only custom games that have less saplings spawning in :coffee:

    Yes.  I think this is something that a few people have a misconception about.  This is one setting where the standard Interloper is as forgiving as standard Pilgrim.

  18. 1 hour ago, xanna said:

    I've started to change my mind about the harvesting animations a bit. The lurchiness of it depends a bit on where you are positioned relative to the carcass when you start to harvest - which makes sense - and I don't find it as motion-sickly as I did in most cases. I am guilty of a bit of a knee-jerk 'unfamiliar thing bad' reaction and I admit I'm getting used to it now.

    I still don't find the look of them great, but I'm sure they'll work on it some more when/if they have the time, and they, like all animatons of repetitive actions, will get repetitive after awhile, I'm sure.

    I'm learning to live with harvesting without being able to do it by hand.  It still doesn't make logical sense to me to have to use a tool to skin a rabbit or break into a ptarmigan, but it is what it is.  I also still feel that quartered bags should be able to be harvested by hand when thawed since the player has already needed and used a tool to quarter the animal in the first place (and taken an associated condition hit on the tool).  Making them take a condition hit on the tool for every bag (regardless of whether they just use the tool for the first cut from the bag or use it to harvest the entire bag) seems a bit excessive to me.  I hope they will consider changing it in the future.

    Also, I don't think the change will have any real effect on deterring micro-harvesting since people seem to have already found a workaround (but I also don't really feel that was HL's primary goal in making the change).

     

    • Upvote 2
  19. 28 minutes ago, LostRealist said:

    I actually agree, I don't eat ruined stuff either for immersion's sake - just pointing out what I find to be the most reasonable answer to "Why does it matter how good you are at cooking" when relating to parasites specifically. Logically, cooked meat is cooked meat, no matter how experienced the chef was. But the path it takes to get there may look quite different and since it spends that path being not cooked, that's when it's dangerous. Most parasites would only stay mobile and alive for so long when exposed to the air directly and their eggs would dry out quite quickly, but if an inexperienced chef puts the cooked slab on the same surface he prepared the raw meat on and then eats it from there - that'll do. Also not unlikely this would be something that's pointed out emphatically in a book like "Wilderness Kitchen", methinks.

    I don't know, for my headcanon it's the logical answer. Your mileage may obviously vary, that's up to you.

    Well, head canon is a lot like soap - cleaning up innumerable things in the gaming world. 😀I seldom get to Level 5 cooking in my runs since I limit most of them to 50-days, so it's not a head canon I really need any mileage from.  Wouldn't mind some soap in the game to wash these stinking clothes though.

    • Upvote 1
  20. 8 minutes ago, LostRealist said:

    Which is what makes it tricky in the first place. Not placing cooked food where you had placed raw meat before would be a simple example. Not wiping your hands on your face or clothing when handling raw meat, using separate utensils for raw and cooked stuff, preparing your food in such a way that you don't splatter meat juices everywhere - kitchen hygiene goes further than the use of soap.

    ... and do you realistically think that the old meat juices from before you got Cooking 5 aren't still on the cooking surface after you attain that level of expertise or that your hands and gloves are not just that much dirtier later on in the game than they are days after starting out?  Actually, I'm surprised we don't just get arbitrarily "smelly" over the course of a run such that it doesn't matter whether or not we're packing around raw meat in that moment for a wolf to smell us.  It's a game (lol) - Level 5 cooking is just a thing people want to attain because they like the perk - not having to worry about being poisoned by 100-day old cooked meat that has, perhaps, stayed frozen, but likely has sat out on the ground exposed to the sun and maybe been even pissed on by wolves, etc. Enjoy.  Personally, I don't kill so much in advance that I can't get it eaten before it goes bad.

  21. 1 hour ago, Laika Ivanova said:

    I disagree that the game has to be played for weeks/months or even years. Personally I do that, but I know others do not and as Raphael said, they have a lot more new and generally less experienced players that either have to constantly start over because they are not as experienced, or it is just the way they play. The only issue I see here is that the players that are dedicated to one save are left out.

    As I said, Hinterland definitely did think about this, otherwise there wouldn't have been statements from Raphael regarding Scurvy. But then again as I also said, Scurvy is really well designed, even for very long running saves that already used most finite resorces. There are other ways to easily deal with it which is why I hope they will consider enabling it in a future patch. And hopefully attempt to avoid such a decision in the future.

    There's also another "player group" involved here.  This is meant to be a permadeath game, which means that any save can and should end at any time and learning to lose them is "part of the game." - BUT some have gotten around that and found a way to backup their saves and, hence, have become, as a result, perhaps more "dedicated" to one save than they should be.  That said, I probably would have made the opposite choice - let scurvy loose on long-running saves and let the attrition happen as it may.  I doubt there would have been less gnashing of teeth here from it though.  HL was truly in a no win situation; and for what it is worth, I support their choice and I've come to agree with it.  Here's why:

    Way back when, I put an option into the wish list for players to be able to change things mid-save (mostly because I wanted a way to increase the difficulty on the file as the player felt more competent at the game.  That suggestion was voted down by the players as being unfair because the player had already survived X days at the lower difficulty and surviving X+ days at a higher difficulty was not comparable to surviving from day one at the higher difficulty.

    This is much the same - those long-term saves have survived those days without scurvy (in effect, at a lower difficulty than having to consider getting scurvy from day one).  Players with older saves can still play them at the same difficulty in which they started them (that is, without scurvy in the game).

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