UpUpAway95

Also, there appears to be an almost guaranteed spawn of a heavy hammer in one of 3 or 4 locations in Blackrock. Not sure if the actual location in Blackrock is tied to the old loot tables or whether it will move randomly among those locations regardless of the loot table the player is on.

I hope so. BTW, I just started a new One-Region Ash Canyon run. I didn't get rubbings by Stone Shelf Cave, but I did get trampled by the moose there... caught me totally off guard and prompted a premature end to that run... Lol. I also has deer carcasses galore, but very few human ones. I'm starting to wonder if there isn't some sort of "cap" conflict at work here... dependent somewhat on the capacity of the player's system (I'm on a generic Xbox One, so I don't expect it can have the same capacity as many of the PC's out there and certainly not as much as a Xbox X or a PS5... Just a thought as to why I'm maybe seeing more problems than some.

Fewer containers spawn into the tail section on Interloper overall. The general type of contents in the containers that do spawn contain the same sort of loot as those same containers would in Pilgrim (exception the higher quality items that simply don't spawn at all in Interloper). Pilgrim also has more items in each container because Pilgrim allows for a higher "container item density" than interloper. No specific item inside the containers is absolutely guaranteed; that is, I have done test runs with Pilgrim loot settings that have not spawned an additional hacksaw inside a container at the summit, some are missing the rifle, some don't have a heavy hammer, some don't have an expedition parka, some have two. There is a random factor at work in addition to the various settings that control loot types and loot amounts. Also through such testing, I have determined that the best way to have Loper amounts of loot with a chance at finding things like an Expedition Parka is to set the Baseline Resource Availability setting to Very High (as it is in PIlgrim) and then set all the other loot control settings to the same as Interloper: That is: Item Decay Rate to Very High, Loose Item Availability to Low, Empty Container Chance Modifier to High, Starting Gear Allocation to Low (so players spawns without matches or bedroll), and Reduce Container Item Density to High. This will ensure that the same amount of containers in the world are empty and there will be fewer loose items next to corpses as in interloper and that far fewer containers will contain more than one item, but still allow high quality items to randomly spawn on occasion. One should note that this will also allow knives, hatchets and bows to spawn. However, the overall amount of loot will not be as overwhelming as it is in Stalker, Voyageur or Pilgrim. Conversely, one can have PIlgrim amounts of loot without hatchets, knives or higher clothing by setting Baseline Resource Availability to Low and then the other settings to Pilgrim levels.

Bleak Inlet has fishing and the beachcombing at least gives a purpose for going out onto the weak ice.

Broken Railroad is definitely my favorite forge. Ash Canyon is probably my favorite zone overall though, followed closely by Timberwolf Mountain. Since Ash Canyon was added, I've probably spent about 80% of my runs in that NE corner of the map. The only thing missing from that corner of the map is a regular forge. I had expected one to be in Blackrock, but it wasn't to be. Hopefully, they'll put one in Perseverence Mills, which I'm fairly sure is going to be added between HRV and Blackrock because, in Episode One, Grey Mother indicates that Perseverence Mills is north of Milton. That all said, the only zone I really dislike is Forlorn Muskeg.

I try to open the container I think has the best chance of having simple or quality tools first when at the summit. That way, if the hacksaw's condition falls too far, I can repair it (even if I have to scrap some other tool for the metal first).

It's RNG. Once the condition of it gets below 50% (i.e. in the "yellow" zone) there is a small chance it can fail. It's the same as it is with food giving you food poisoning... always RNG. I've even accidentally eaten raw meat and not have it give me food poisoning. In that case, the odds are extremely high that it will give you food poisoning, but not quite 100%. ETA: They also claim that sodas can never give you food poisoning regardless of condition. I no longer believe them since I have gotten food poisoning once from a 6^ can of Stacy's Grape soda. Again, the odds must be extremely low... I've probably played 2000 to 3000 hours in this game now and only had the one instance happen... but it did happen, so it can happen again.

Lol... I have seen the likes of Kimiota and Wonz down them with a single flare-gun hit, but yeah Rambling Rudolph is usually what I end up with as well. I have managed to bring down 1 in 3 hits. I like to pick on the Ash Canyon moose by Stone Shelf Cave as my test subject. There's a nice tree I can get on top off to avoid being stomped.

Fair enough... it's a tough one. Killing moose with the flare gun isn't easy and shells are very limited. If you manage to kill even 1 moose, you'll be doing great.

The one at the summit is a guaranteed spawn on all difficulties. It should be there... hopefully, with about 6 shells on Pilgrim (if you're lucky).

There is a flare gun in Ash Canyon (pilgrim loot settings) if you haven't left there yet. It's at a campfire that spawns a short distance west from Climber's Cave (across a log bridge). However, it doesn't have shells with it. Those spawn randomly in containers or on corpses in that zone.

Yeah, it caught me by surprise as well. The lichen is definitely my preference... even more so since that happened.

Sorrry for your loss. On this same note... do not go to sleep without making sure your antiseptic works (if you're using the bottled stuff rather than the old man's beard dressings). I once lost a character to infection because I failed to note that my 45% antiseptic failed to do its job.

Certainly, being unable to sleep when dehydrated would make more sense. Still, going without sleep for a prolonged period of time should drain health... not cause the player to randomly faint regardless of what they are doing at the time. Adrenaline alone would force even a very tired person to stay awake if, say, they were being attacked by a wolf or crossing a wobbly bridge. They may suffer from poor judgment (which cannot really be reflected in game because the player is making the decisions) and struggle with their coordination (reflected in this game when health gets below 10%) more than they normally would, but they would not just pass out. What if they created a separate meter for exhaustion and sleep... such that "rest" (without sleeping) would allow the recovery of exhaustion and lack of sleep would only come into play if the player failed to sleep at least 6 hours in a 24-hour period. Carry weight would be significantly affected IF and only when the exhaustion meter was in the red and resting (i.e. passing time for 1 hour) would recover that meter to full. The effect of the sleep meter being in the red would be scaled depending on how many consecutive days the player was short on sleep... say, 2% per hour if 1 night's sleep was missed increasing to 4% if 2 nights are missed, etc. Once in the red, the player would be required to sleep 10 hours straight in order to fill the sleep meter and prevent the further loss of health. (The loss of health should be significant enough that it cannot be indefinitely countered by ingestion of birch bark teas so that the player cannot use "exhaustion strats" to push their character through several consecutive days without sleep or loss of any condition.

I assume what you found is that it takes some effort to actually wake a sleeping bear in the game. What the player doesn't know, however, is how close the bear is to waking up naturally to go back to resuming it's patrol. In this case, bad timing can get you killed (oops - to be more precise... can get you mauled... whether the bear leaves you alive or not is reliant on an entirely different set of parameters). So, to put in in a more boring speech - The surest way for a player to make sure the bear they shot is dead is to check their journal first.

Good to know. Thanks.

That no animal bug is frustratingly inconsistent. I had the one start in Ash Canyon with no animals and then the next one was back to more normal numbers of living animals, but still no carcasses at all and very few corpses. At least I could stone some rabbits for food other than cat tails and birch bark.

That's one I really wish HL would incorporate into the vanilla game... for those of us on console who don't use mods. Maybe it will be legitimately allowed on console after they bring in mod support.

There is a list here on the forums that indicates what locations are needed to fulfill the faithful cartographer achievement. It's not the same as mapping all the locations. For example, transition entrances and exits need to be mapped. It was buggy enough way back when I got the achievement (just after the Hesitant Prospect update). Reading through the thread, there seem to be several issues with it still.

I play on Xbox - no backups.

It's a surprisingly long time, although I usually collapse the files at 50 days because it gets pretty monotonous after that. A few streamers have done 50-days in several different one-region challenges in Interloper. It's a very tough challenge on Loper because you cannot forge... If you do spawn into a zone with a forge, the heavy hammer will not spawn in that same zone (or at least that used to be the case... but I'll expand on that later). Since you cannot forge, you don't have access to a knife or hatchet of any kind, so you're entirely dependent on stoning or snaring rabbits and kiting wolves into doing your killing for you. This may be changing, however, because when I was doing those tests I did in Broken Railroad last month, I did have two "Baseline Resource Availability = Low" spawns where the heavy hammer did spawn within Broken Railroad. Whether that was a glitch/quirk because it was a Custom game or a change implemented by HL remains to be seen. On stalker or a custom interloper that enables rifles and revolvers, it becomes a much easier challenge. Of course, the more loot you set the game to give you, the easier it becomes. I believe someone on these forums reported that they had done a 250-day, one-region challenge run on Pilgrim. Cloth is not really an issue since you can always get by on totally animal-based clothing, unless you're in HRV where the lack of a work bench means you can't craft clothes. If you don't find a mag lens in your zone, you will eventually run out of matches unless you can keep a single fire burning continually (so you would need to be able to get a large, continuous supply of wood)... but I would say one could conceivably survive indefinitely if they can do that and if there are enough rabbits and/or wolves killing deer to keep the character fed. Of course, my runs are usually much, much shorter; but it's still a fun challenge. Maybe some day, I'll git gud at them. 😀

Yes... mistakes have been made.😲

Do not assume that bear is dead until your journal says he's dead. Trying to harvest as bear that is only sleeping is not a good time.

It's rather OP... to be able to just put them on and forget about them... getting their related buffs 100% of the time. That's probably why they should require a mill to repair... meaning the player has to brave the T-wolves and take the necessary steps to unlock at least one of the workshops in order to repair them... which is not possible during a "one region" challenge in Ash Canyon... leading to a player wanting to preserve their condition. Otherwise, why not just have them disappear into a constantly equipped state (like the Technical Backpack).

It might seem silly, but it does save me from accidentally leaving the crampons on all the time. Really, the ballistic vest should go in one of the sweater/shirt slot, under the jacket. They could also have given it a warmth stat since it would provide some warmth, particularly if worn over a sweater/shirt and under a jacket. The crampons should go in a separate shoe/boot accessory slot that only appears available when boots are worn since crampons cannot go onto running shoes or leather shoes. It makes no sense that we seem to put crampons on our head (if one considers where the accessory slots are located on the page relative to the character model.