UpUpAway95

One from the legendary Hank Snow (adapted from Spell of the Yukon poem by Robert Service):

I have adapted - I use a torch... Still where there are windows (like the main floor of the dam) and it is a bright sunny day, we should be able to see something (like we used to). For the hallways through the lower dam... understandable that it would be dark at all times of day. However, I simply cannot see inside a lot of the interiors (that do have windows) in the daytime. I've tried jacking my brightness way up and it does not help. It might be a bug since it is clearly different than before the update. At any rate, TLD has generally been hard on my vision - my eyes tire quickly, they water a lot while play, and I do get headaches. I need to take very frequent breaks - almost at every sleep in game. So - I do adapt and overcome... by not playing so much at all anymore and for much shorter periods. 😀 If I had to guess why TLD is so much more straining on my vision, I'd say it's an unnatural gradient to the lighting in general. Since the update, the outdoor lighting has improved... there's more texture and depth... but indoors that is not the case. For example, in the maintenance shed in the dam at night... a significant amount of moonlight can be seen through the various openings in the roof, but none of that lighting gradually filters to the floor (the way it would IRL). At floor level it is 100% dark until a torch is lit. I live in a rural area. There are no street lights. At night, only moonlight... yet, I can see inside the house with even a sliver of moon enough to not have to turn on a light to get to the bathroom and back to my bed. No can do in TLD.

I wish I was seeing these sorts of duplication bugs in my runs... but so far, nada. Best guess is that something is triggering it that I haven't done yet. I haven't made acorn coffee yet or made any fire hardened arrows... I wonder if something like that is setting it off.

I think cutting it back to every 2nd or 3rd blizzard doesn't work well with the variable blizzard settings... that is, they occur less frequently in the easier difficulties (Pilgrim and Voyageur). Rather than a reduction across the board, I think it should on more of a sliding scale with the blizzard setting... that is, the higher the blizzard frequency, the greater the number of blizzards that can happen where loot will not wash up on the beach.

Here's a new one... I dropped a ruined flare by a fire in a cave (after using it to light the fire and double checking for all loot in the area. I left the fire burning while I grabbed a torched and explored the paths farther into the cave. I eventually came back to my fire and my flare was lying there beside it... However, when I picked it up, it was not ruined, but a perfectly usable new flare. Attempt to repeat it: I repeated the process; however, this time the flare disappeared completely (despawned) the moment I dropped it after lighting the fire. I think this is also in error because IIRC, don't ruined items despawn only if put into containers? This was in the cave in Ash Canyon with the waterfall and using a marine flare to get through the waterfall and lighting a fire immediately after going through it, exploring the cave with a torch to the point of the rope climb and then turning around to go back to my fire.

Still, technically, "gunloper" leaves the BRA at low and just changes the gun availability setting. BRA really does need to be fixed such that it defines the quality of loot available (i.e. disabiling high-end clothing). The three other settings I mentioned need to be expanded such that the loot amount can be effectively reduced even if the BRA setting is to allow knives, hatchets, and other high-quality loot. Ideally, BRA would also have sub-sliders allowing to turn individual important items on (if BRA = low) or off (if BRA is set to medium or high). Things like pre-made hatchets, knives, and even lanterns and distress pistols should be able to to toggled individually by the player. This sort of change would give much wider flexibility for a variety of imaginative runs. Call me crazy, but I'd even like to be able to turn of matches and separately increase the likelihood of mag lenses spawning to compensate... or if they add, say, bow drills as a means to start fires someday. The possibilities are endless.

Always start with the Interlper template. Ideally, don't change the BRA from low to medium and only activate the rifle or the pistol. Do a forge run as you would in Loper. If you do change the BRA, then make sure that the loose item availability, empty container chance modifier, and reduce item container density are set to their harshest settings and that the item decay rate is set to its fastest setting. Ideally, they will fix the BRA such that it only affects the type of loot available, not the amounts of loot available and provide a separate toggle to enable just a hatchet and just a knife if desired. This would really enhance the gunloper experience. In the meantime, @ManicManiacsuggested, another way to deal with "too much loot" is to not pick it up or immediately harvest it or put back into containers out of sight where they can simply decay. Your abundance in tools is likely RNG since I've done several starts with various settings where tools have been in relatively short supply. All in all, the randomness has created an imbalance in what can be found in most runs (e.g. my pilgrim run in Mystery Lake that yielded 8 can openers, but only 1 knife and no gun of any kind. My more recent quick start in Milton (to check for moose rubbings in Milton Basin) yielded 3 can openers in Gray Mother's house alone, but no other tools. I don't think I ever did find a hatchet on that run (although I did not search all of Milton... just enough to give me enough clothing to stay warm going into the Basin.

Ouch!!!

or perhaps this one by Gordon Lightfoot if I was going with some lyrics:

I tend to stick to the game sound tracks. I agree with @Kranium that lyrics don't really fit with the game's vibe. If I did pull up some other music, it would probably be El Condor Pasa from Zamfir:

The game is just giving bears "no quarter" right now.😀

I haven't encountered that one yet. I have had a number of sticks despawn just as I've been picking them up though and not go into my inventory at all. Same with some stones.

There's this one place on one bridge in Ash Canyon were I always tend to "trip" (i.e. get momentarily stuck)... scares the crap out of me every time. I'm having an bit of an issue after this last update disengaging myself at the bottom of climbing ropes... more often than not, I start to climb back up them for some reason. I wouldn't class any of these as "my biggest gripe" though. I think the biggest gripe I have now is the darkness of many interiors even on bright sunny days. The Carter Dam in particular has gotten a lot darker inside since the update... I can't even get past the lobby now without having to light a torch.

Then the solution is to make the custom menu more easily understood in the context of a "normal" difficulty. Anyone playing a harder difficulty should have familiarized themselves with the game enough to understand the custom menu (especially if it is presented to them at the start of the game rather than buried below four other standard difficulty settings. If they were "perfect" as they are, why are so many Lopers inclined to suggest changes and complain every time HL changes something... e.g. (a few I've heard over the years): Birch bark teas added - Lopers response was too OP; T-wolves added - AI sucks... Blackrock added - Lopers have no reason to go there....... Why aren't they "homogenous" in there assessment that the settings are "perfect?" Answer - Because they aren't. If they leave the current templates in the default menu, then you could still select Loper, Stalker, Voyageur, or Pilgrim from within the Custom menu. Those settings just become part of the custom menu rather than standing out alone on the main menu page. Throwing it all into the custom menu streamlines the startup process. If they add new templates that reflect some of the more commonly loved custom games - e.g. gunloper, NOGOA, NOPE, Deadman, etc., then that would save players having to look for the unique codes for those games as well... or perhaps they could give players a way to save their own templates, so they could "quick start" their favorite custom game without having to type in a code each time. As I see it, it opens up a world of possibilities.

I knew that... some people say why, I say why not (didn't someone once say something like that?) I also know that Lopers are not homogenous, but I was responding to someone else's "we are Lopers" comment. If they eliminate the standard difficulty settings, then feats would have to be able to be earned in custom because the custom menu would be the starting point and would be the only way to change parameters/game difficulty. The more I think about it, I think the way to go with this would be to leave in just one "normal/default" template... kind of like a number of character creators in RPG... show the default template when you open the custom menu and show what each slider means in the context of those settings... Then have the descriptions change slightly as the player moves the various sliders around. If necessary to maintian performance overall, some sliders could also move relative to each other (much like the Oblivion character creator did). For example, if there is an overall "animal cap" for balance, if one spawn chance slider is pushed to very high, the max for other related ones could become high or medium.

I'd die laughing if we opened the door and got a prerecorded voice saying... "Nuclear protection on a budget."

So then, why not eliminate the standard difficulties altogether and just use the custom menu right off the start? Templates could stay in place, maybe even just mix them up so they don't even appear to be in order of "difficulty" and maybe remove the names for them... and then even add a couple of new ones the change the experience even more (e.g. NOGOA, NOPE). This would re-focus HL on providing flexibility within the custom menu of interest to a wider variety of players and cleaning it up a bit to make it function more "as advertised" and be more easily understood... instead of their having to referee arguments like this one over content not being equally accessible to all of the standard difficulties or some types of content diminishing the harshness of some difficulties. People would perhaps then just be able to choose what content they wanted to "turn on" or "turn off" or how they themselves would want to scale the "difficulty" or "harshness" of their own experience.

This would be controlled by the "bear spawn chance" setting. Using the custom templates, the bear spawn chance is low in Pilgrim, medium in Voyageur, very high in stalker, and high in interloper. Not sure this necessarily means that the player will always see 3, 5, & 4. I've long suspected that they are somewhat dependent on an overall "animal cap" in the area any may vary depending on, say, whether or not a moose has spawned in that area. I say this because pushing all the animal settings in custom to very high does not seem to give the same sort of increase in every animal as just pushing one setting does.

There is a comment on another thread in the Wish List section entitled "Interloper Overhaul" (updated), a few posts down by @Sir Major M.oos.E Sr. that I'm going to quote hear: ... and here is my response (because I feel it is also relevant to this thread and your comment): So, I ask again... what to Lopers actually want?... more content or a stripped down, harsh experience?

Thanks... it's looking more and more like they have either gone missing (perhaps due to the addition of the acorn-producing trees) or are intentionally removed with this update.

I understand your beef... but, on Xbox at least, it is not being sold as "game preview" and hasn't been sold as that since August 1, 2017. Since HL's quote indicates it was released on all platforms as of that date, I doubt Steam is selling it under "early access" either. Yeah, there is nothing legally that can be done and these "premature" (i.e. overtly buggy) releases are a big problem for consumers... but it still does not mean it is IN early access. Whether it SHOULD still be is a different question... I would agree with you that it SHOULD BE still in early access and that then maybe HL would have kept a better focus on finishing the story... but it is not still in early access (that's just the sad fact). Still, telling someone that they bought an early access game when they didn't and telling them that they should have waited until it comes out of early access when it is already out of early access is not helpful to them at all... It's just confusing them. At any rate, the OP was expressly talking about this expansion pass on Xbox... we waited longer for its release on console... and even that didn't sort of some pretty serious bugs related to the consoles... and that is disappointing.

Nice work! Hopefully, HL will find a fix for it soon. Looks very much like the game does have some conflicts with Xbox's sleep mode and quick resume functions.

Found Just finished my moose test in Milton... no moose up top (pond near exit to HRV) and no rubbings. Moose found in Milton Basin... no rubbings. Ash Canyon 2 runs... moose in both locations, rubbings in neither; Broken Railroad 3 runs... moose once up top near hunting lodge... no rubbings; moose near bridge twice (maintenance shed level)... no rubbings. Still a perfect batting average re moose with no rubbings.

I haven't started a run in Milton yet. I'll do that to check it out.

Thanks! I really appreciate it!