UpUpAway95

11 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Well, I've started a new challenge in Broken Railroad.  I have a hacksaw and a prybar, wolves are turned off, so no game of any kind; fish spawns are high - let's see how long I can survive on fish and cat tails; that is, how many holes the prybar will cut into the ice before it breaks.

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.

Could it be you're just noticing them more and HL hasn't made any change at all?  There have long been ample in the world overall to cover any bow and travois needs the player has over many, many hundreds of days - even without beachcombing.

Well, I've started a new challenge in Broken Railroad.  I have a hacksaw and a prybar, wolves are turned off, so no game of any kind; fish spawns are high - let's see how long I can survive on fish and cat tails; that is, how many holes the prybar will cut into the ice before it breaks.

5 hours ago, LostRealist said:

The way I figure it works is that at a high cooking skill, you get better at hygiene. Meaning you are less likely to inadvertently transfer parasites or their eggs to places where you might ingest them directly. Realistically, this would be the major concern as far as parasites go and it makes sense that you get better at avoiding that as you get better at handling raw meat.

How is it possible to even get better at hygiene - there's no soap in the game at all.

20 minutes ago, BugReportEnthusiast said:

The materials required to make tip ups aren't renewable in the same way that snares are, you have to beachcomb for em

You can still fish with just line and a hook and each fish you catch is a major source of vitamin C, so still toss in a few rabbits from a nearby grove and you're hibernating just the same way as before.  Perhaps you need to make more knives than arrows at the forge now because harvesting the rabbits causes some wear and tear on your tools now, but still doesn't super encourage "getting outdoors and exploring" in the same way cabin fever does.  So, no, I don't think scurvy replaces it.  Turn it off in custom if you don't like it.

Just replace rabbits with fish and tip ups and you have a rich Vitamin C source that affords the same ability to hibernate as snaring rabbits. 

3 hours ago, xanna said:

In fact it's not even 3. I think the OP is concerned about reasons to go back to a region, not reasons to go at all, so Ash Canyon doesn't fit because a player can get the backpack on their first visit and never go back. Forge and ammo forge are the only things we might have to revisit a region for, and since there's more than one of those things, I don't think any specific region has a 'reason' for returning. I'm not sure where the idea that the game is failing if it doesn't give the new regions specific reasons to revist has come from, I don't think it's ever been true.

I'm going to spend time in a region for the same reason I want to play TLD at all - because it's cool.

That's very true - no region has a specific reason to return beyond, perhaps completing the Signal Void quest (depending on whether or not the player visited that region prior to going to Forsaken and getting the radio). 

I personally find the change in player discourse about new zones interesting.  For example, lopers went from being appreciative of just more area to explore to "there's no reason for a loper to go there." and now there's "no reason for anyone to revisit."  Perhaps a sign of just too big a game world with just too much stuff in it (even on the harshest settings) for one to feel "scarcity" beyond the first few days of starting a run, I wonder?

16 minutes ago, Enigmaecho said:

randomized forges would be a neat spin but overall all the regions are balanced for everyone on lower difficulty you have astronomical amounts of loot and the warmest gears in the game while simultaneously having a generous warming indoor temp, these regions are big but otherwise I don’t think they’re very difficult maybe mid tier around HRV /AC level of challenge definitely way easier than bleak inlet and blackrock. The other things about wolves and weather do apply already the higher the difficulty the faster and colder it gets the more unpredictable the weather the more wolves and less game less loot all apply as difficulty increases 😊

The ranges in weather and wolves (other than when they are passive) are really not that significant.  They could be increased.

Loot amounts are also not that significant unless one is restricting themselves to a single zone for a long period.  When the game is played by running from one "nearly guaranteed" spawn to another (as many lopers have done and still do even without as stringest loot tables) only the presence of predators and the lack of knives and hatchets makes it all that different.  Once is there "enough loot" having more loot than you can possibly ever use really doesn't make it that much easier... and not being able to turn off things like the glimmer fog make some regions much more difficult for some players.

54 minutes ago, Enigmaecho said:

Always sucks to see this kind of sentiment on the things they’ve worked passionately on for us, the new regions are meant to be challenging the game is a decade old and vets have been asking for a challenge they finally give us a challenge and it’s met with complaints. The region offers a forge that alone makes it worth a visit the regions vastness adds a great deal of beauty to the scenery(which people seem to forget is the whole reason the game is in an oil painting art style) and though it seems huge it takes no longer to get shelter to shelter than to walk across pv the two new non load interiors at the mindful and drift cabin are fantastic for immersion there’s ample wildlife that’s easy af to find on big open feilds I was working on my 100days there when zone dropped now I can’t wait to spend 100 in the zone I’ve been exploring it for a month already just finished mapping, if your first impression is “never go back” I’d say that’s a bad one same with the zone, they’re hard because they’re new and unknown, cherish that because once you memorize a map 90% of the challenge is gone 

 

There are ways to make every region suitable to every level of difficulty.  One method I just recently brought up on another thread is to make numbers of the shelters "inaccessible" as the player selects a higher difficulty while making more shelters available when the player selects a lower difficulty.  There used to be such a mechanic in Mystery Lake and Coastal Highway where more of the cabins would be burned down if one was playing on a higher standard difficulty - so it can be done.  This could also be done with "working" benches and forges and ammo forges, etc. - having the "be there" but render a percentage of them "inoperable" when a higher difficulty is selected.  The weather can be made "worse" across all zones when a higher difficulty is selected.  Wolves could be make to spawn in zones that done normally have them (e.g. the Ravine) when a higher difficulty is selected.  Players who want to take it easy should not have to avoid entire regions of the map to play on that difficulty.

Having forges etc. in most zones but rendering an increasing percentage of them inoperable at random as the difficulty setting is increased could actually make the more challenging and less predictable/repetitive since the player could then no longer count on a particular forge to be operable every run.

I kind of anticipated these sorts of issues with it - one reason I haven't really had much desire to even try it out, TBH.  Hopefully, they'll work on it some more and fix some of these issues.  I had a good laugh though picturing Will/Astrid sliding down a hill on their fanny with the sled trying to mow them over from behind. 😀

4 hours ago, MrWolf said:

I agree.  Once the animal is quartered, we should be able to harvest thawed quarter bags by hand.  After all, we can use our bare hands to break down a metal skillet, cooking pot, or prybar.

Edit: I did a quick test and just like the carcasses, you can harvest a small piece from a quarter bag using a tool, then harvest the rest of the bag by hand.

Nice workaround.  Thanks - probably won't save much wear and tear on the tool vs. just harvesting the whole bag in one step with the tool, but it's worth a shot.  The whole thing still makes absolutely 0 sense to me; but unless they change things, I'll just have to adapt.  It's gonna make things tougher in my 50-day, single-zone, non-loper runs, when I often find only 1 knife and no whetstone.

I can't help but feel that HL wants increasingly to pidgeon-hole me into just running all over the entire vast map world looting instead.

1 hour ago, Stuffed Plush Chainsaw said:

This is correct, of course. I also thought of the "hole in the pail" solution (actually a great name for a band, now that think of it), although it would be a little suspect (again ^^) if all the pails had holes in them.

But I get your basic stance regarding this. I, too, would wish for the little things to be a little more polished.

Interestingly enough I had a discussion about a very similar topic about a very different piece of software I am working on, and how I would wish we (as in my company) could prioritize the little things a bit more rahter than chasing the next big feature. You don't perceive a thing high quality because it can do a magnitude of big things, but rather because all the small details are thought of and harmonize well with the overall appearance. I realize that to achieve this indeed means affording time to things many if not most people will never consciously realize, but that's kinda the goal, coming back to immersion: you are not supposed to be alerted to the fact that the very artificial world you are interacting with in fact is very different from the reality you are trying to escape.

Your response brought this to mind.  Probably should be in the songs to listen to while playing TLD thread, but I couldn't resist to just plop it here.

20 hours ago, xanna said:

I'd love another region that is 'beginner' difficulty in terms of weather and shelter at least, not another that is challenging to this extent. All the new maps have been high difficulty (labelled as 'advanced', or Blackrock and Transfer Pass which are labelled as 'intermediate' but still feel advanced to me), and that feels unbalanced to me. We like the 'beginner' maps too!

Obviously this feedback is gonna be far too late to affect anyting Hinterland is planning, though!

I wish they could adjust more things in the difficulty settings to make zones easier or harder depending on whatever difficulty the player chooses.  Baseline Resources should also include things like shelters.  That is, if a region is set to the easiest difficulty, the game could add in shelters that aren't there on the harder difficulties.  This use to happen to some extent in Mystery Lake, where the number of fishing cabins that appeared burned or intact varied with difficulty.  Sadly though, the newer zones don't appear to have any similar mechanic.

Of course, weather is somewhat adjustable in Custom, but as I keep saying the ranges on those sliders should be expanded on both ends so that there is a more obvious effect when pushed to the maximums on either end and more flexibility to allow for different player choices.

Found another issue - They've taken away the option to harvest thawed quarter bags of meat by hand.  This makes no sense at all - a wolf bite out of a kill allows harvesting by hand but quartering the entire carcass somehow doesn't "dress it" or cut it open enough to harvest it by hand?  I took down one moose and my knife went from 70% to 58% condition as I harvested the completely thawed bags indoors (that's on top of whatever condition hit it took to quarter the animal).  Please HL, do something about this - either allow harvesting thawed quarter bags by hand again or significantly reduce the amount of condition loss on the tool for harvesting each individual bag (when the bags are not frozen at least).

ETA:  In case there is any question about "microharvesting" - These were 1 kg steaks, except for the 0.6 kg "leftover" steak from each bag.

35 minutes ago, Laika Ivanova said:

So I gave up, started a new save (as having to give up a year old save just to access new content because it was intentionally excluded from existing saves wasn't bad enough), now I come to realize that one of the custom recipes, lili's pancakes hasn't spawned in! Love it...

Not gonna lie, I love the game. But the recent updates have just been so messed up compared to how it used to be 3-4 years ago. Now things don't spawn in, bug out or when they actually do work they have questionable design choices like a weightless, unrepairable gas mask just so the player doesn't have to bother about keeping it in their inventory or not...no trade offs whatsoever. Same with the handheld shortwave.

As much as I try to see the good in it, the past updates just haven't been cutting it compared to a few years ago even tho there is so much potential. Stuff like the flask or travois in this one are amazing, minus a few tweaks but that can be dealt with later. But the rest I mentioned is just...I dunno...

I know Hinterland right now is busy with fixing bugs from this update, but I really hope they get everything from the past updates in line with how the game was years ago at some point.

Lily'ls pancakes probably is there, but the hitboxes on the recipes can be really finicky.  It took me three trips to Foreman's Retreat and very specific directions of a good member here before I caught even a flash of an indication that something was there to be found.  It took several more minutes of moving my cursor around the area before I could get it to come up long enough for me to click on it and get the recipe.  (I play on a Xbox Series X and a lot of the hit boxes can be difficult from time to time.  Not sure if this is the same on PC, though.).

The possibility of that wolf spawning in that ice cave has been there from the start of HRV.  He doesn't spawn in all the time though.

The community has named him, but I'm having an alzheimer's moment and I can't recall his name right now. (Is it Sketchy?  Perhaps someone else can help here?)

3 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I realize that.  It is something that would have been easily fixed with a little further forethought.  The metal pails that are usable could have been modelled with visible holes, rust, etc. that would have made them more immersive and still unusable.  The same thing goes for the pipes sitting on top of destructible crates.  They could be sitting on something else or they could have been given physics that causes them to fall to the floor rather than disappear or float in mid-air.  Some of the containers sitting on top of destructible crates already fall to the floor, so it is something that is possible to program within whatever limitations the game engine or this game's architecture has.

Just correcting a typo in the third sentence since I realized it too late for me to edit the post.  The third sentence should read "The metal pails that are UNUSABLE could have been modeled......  (sorry for the error and this awkward correction.)

1 hour ago, itsLydt said:

I think it should be an accessibility option! Or if they rework them to make them smoother that's probably fine too 

It may indeed come to that.  We'll still waiting on a number of those that affect vision differences - e.g. a contrast adjustment and a glimmer fog toggle.  I'd like to also make allowable for us to make such adjustments mid-file though (particularly with contrast, since a change is sometimes as good as a rest).

I find elements of them chunky and jarring, as you say; and of course, the down side of animating things in games is that the animations can become repetitive.  Rather than an overall toggle, maybe a "skip harvesting animation" option or, even better, a "skip all future harvesting animations" button.  That way, the command could be given while within an existing run (since we can't change custom toggles after we've started a run).

I'm still hoping that the actual animations they've done can be made smoother and more immersive as they tweak them.  This is something new they just figured out how to do, so I'm willing to give them some time to work on it more.

1 hour ago, twosheds said:

I understood you

Losses as you describe are unfortunate, but they happen and part of the game is trying to prevent such losses.  For me, that means mostly only hunting what I need and being diligent about finding kills as quickly as is reasonably possible.  Yeah, I do lose the occasional quarter bag (which will disappear rather than appear as "ruined", but I don't "waste" a ton of it that way.

I don't rush to Level 5 cooking, which means I'm at risk for food poisoning whenever my mean condition gets low and it means I can't eat it at all if it's ruined.  Currently, the only way I can get this very low condition or spoiled meat out of my world (so I don't accidentally eat it) is by deliberately transferring it to a container.  This also applies to other ruined food and items (like sewing kits)  If you make it so they don't disappear, then that ability also totally disappears and the world eventually gets cluttered with ruined items. 

It's easy enough to handle it as always in the past - avoid putting ruined meat (and other ruined items) into containers if we feel we might want to use or eat them someday.  The travois doesn't change that.

1 hour ago, Stuffed Plush Chainsaw said:

Well you have two interests here competing with one another:

1) The developers want a full and vivid world that looks like it could be a real place, albeit a very abstractly rendered one, admittedly. But a world with no pails (or buckets, as an uncultured being like me would call them) would warrant some questions, like: "Why are there no pails in the world?" or "Why have aliens (from outer space, ofc) invaded Canada and stole all the buckets they could find?" or "Are pails the true reason for the so-far unexplained calamity that has befallen Great Bear Island? Is this a conspiracy of buckets rising up against their fleshy overlords?" Shorter and more seriously: you'd find buckets in such a world, and hence they exist.

2) The developers want water manangement to be at least somewhat challenging. Putting a bucket on a stove and let it boil for 12 hours for 12 liters (that's roughly π gallons, my imperial yet mathematically apt compadres) of water would be hella convenient. It would also free up a lot of time to do other things, and in turn make the game easier, which to balance would warrant a difficulty increase, and also make the pail another piece of mandatory equipment to carry around, further adding to what I came to call "equipment creep" in TLD. (Remember when we got 30kg of carry weight and that's it? Felt adequate back then, but it's unthinkable as of today....)

So, yeah, immersion is kinda important as even I keep spouting off about on repeat, but sometimes gameplay is the more important consideration, and in this case I wholeheartedly vote in favor of the hacksaw way of life for the pail.

--edit

More on topic: I don't think the elephant in the room is breakling immersion from time to time. The elephant in the room is that a 10 year old game refuses to reach a state of adequate "polishedness". Yeah, yeah, I know, but the updates! The patches! The free content! All well and good and as commendable as it deserves to be. But I simply want for once the game to work as intended. How bout that for a patch.

I realize that.  It is something that would have been easily fixed with a little further forethought.  The metal pails that are usable could have been modelled with visible holes, rust, etc. that would have made them more immersive and still unusable.  The same thing goes for the pipes sitting on top of destructible crates.  They could be sitting on something else or they could have been given physics that causes them to fall to the floor rather than disappear or float in mid-air.  Some of the containers sitting on top of destructible crates already fall to the floor, so it is something that is possible to program within whatever limitations the game engine or this game's architecture has.

1 hour ago, xanna said:

I guess this means that more (renewable) vitamin C is available once you have Cooking 5, which might not be intended but it operates as an interesting balance mechanic

I don't think cooking level 5 allows you to eat raw fish without a risk of getting food poisoning.  Doesn't it only stave off the risks of parasites and eating ruined cooked meats?  What I'm thinking is that you would eat before bed and with antibiotics available and then sleep for 10 hours to get rid of the food poisoning (in order to get the major dose of vitamin C from the fresh, raw fish.

1 hour ago, twosheds said:

Let's imagine a situation in the game - you wounded a bear, it ran away and died far from your base. You found it, cut it up, but you can't take the meat away. A lot of time has passed, the meat has spoiled. Now, with the release update, a new item appears that allows you to do this - transport meat, but you cannot do this for known reasons.
Another situation - you are walking along the coastline, collecting loot, among the loot you also come across fish, it is always spoiled and you cannot take it away. You have a carrier, but you can't)
I think this loses all meaning. 

 

 

You can still transport it in your own inventory - just not in the amounts the travois carries, can't you?

I've noticed that the Vitamin C quantity in fish drops from "major" to "moderate" once it's cooks and then reverts to "minor" when it decays to the point of being "gamey."  So, I'm wondering about whether "sushi" is a viable cure for scurvy, although I suspect one might have to be prepared to get some food poisonings, but I'm not sure how big the risk of that is when eating raw fish.  Any thoughts on this out there?

I also think the vitamin C quantity might eventually drop to nothing as the cooked fish decays further.

I hope not.  It's at least one incentive to not hunt excessively to stockpile large supplies of meat, cook it to get to Level 5 quickly, and then let it spoil.  At least now it can't be moved easily via the travois.