UpUpAway95

FA is a harder map for a one map challenge than one would think. It has quite a bit of stuff on it, but the weather can make it tough to explore the map and enjoy doing it. I don't know the age of your son, but I've found that very young people tend to get frustrated with having to keep track of so many parameters. The glimmer fog effect just adds to that "tedium", IMO. Having just one location to avoid it in a zone the size of FA seems rather unbalanced to me and it discourages exploration of the zone and, to some extent combined with the frequent blizzards, encourages staying in and around the hangar for prolonged periods. Another thing I really don't like about FA myself is that there's no two-slot (or more) indoor cooking place anywhere in the hangar or airport area and there are few places where a fire outdoors is sheltered for very long.

Possible, I suppose - IF GBI is all of Canada and the mainland is a representation of the US and the quakes somehow completely submerged the 49th parallel. It would be quite the headcanon though. IF GBI is Vancouver Island, I've wondered if the quakes were movement along the Cascadia subduction zone that pushed Vancouver Island farther north as well as submerging parts of the island itself, making it smaller overall and more isolated.

Dream on, me thinks. I doubt the way the game is structured that there is any way for it to support those sorts of massive and permanent changes to the map. Also, it may fit in with the turbulent lore of GBI before the collapse, but I don't think it fits in at all with the spirit of the game.

I wish they would make it more like campfires - red if you can't and green if you can - and do away with the text about "suitable ice." I don't know how it works on PC, but you have to keep reselecting the entire thing from the wheel each time you want to try a new spot adjacent to a spot where you've received the "suitable ice" blurb (which doesn't appear until you release the click to begin with). Why can we can walk along with the selection made (pointing at the ice in front of us and have it show a red indicator if one can't place a hole there and a green one if one can? It would save a lot of annoying "re-selections" being necessary considering that we don't know (even when consulting the Wiki) whether or not a particular body of water has any suitable ice anywhere on it or just a little bit here and there.

I believe that GBI encompasses bits of feel and lore from various parts o British Columbia's Sunshine Coast and the Alaska panhandle. Various places along the railway feel very much like the White Pass & Yukon Railway that runs as a tourist attraction from Skagway, Alaska to the summit of the White Pass, Yukon. The Coastal Highway region reminds me very much of the highway that runs north along the coast of the mainland from Vancouver.

Thank you for undertaking an investigation. That's sort of my plan as well, but I play very slowly in general so it's going to be slow going for me to double-check the Wiki. I wish I knew if the info came from someone within HL - just in case it is a bug preventing the listed spots from activating.

I've also found several spots in the Milton Basin, but not anywhere above the rope. Since the Wiki mentioned the ponds, I was pretty thorough checking out the two ponds on the way to crash site. I honestly don't know for sure if they are south of the plane crash ( I have difficulty orienting compass directions because the maps are skewed relative to the main map); but they are the only two ponds I know of that could be considered close to the plane crash. I rewalked all over them in my Pilgrim file trying to drop a hole almost with every step and never even came up with a "red" image that would have told me I was at least getting close. All I ever got was the text message about needing the right sort of ice. If the info in the Wiki is corrent, then I suppose it could be a bug preventing fishing in some of the noted spots.

Thanks. I wonder where the information in the Wiki is coming from then. It seems like this verifies that the info in Milton is wrong and, although I haven't tried myself yet, that the info on Forlorn Muskeg is also wrong (since the Wiki says that "the entire marsh" is available for fishing).

I'm having trouble finding any place to fish in or around Milton. The wiki mentions two small ponds south of MacKenzie's crashed plane, but I've thoroughly walked the two ponds along the route one takes between the crash and the town trying to place a fishing hole without any luck. Are these the two ponds being mentioned in the Wiki or are there two other ponds that I'm not aware of somewhere in the area? I've also tried on the pond across of the cave that leads to HRV and the pond behind the church.

I wasn't really suggesting that this exact current behavior is completely intentional, but that HL might be experimenting with the idea of giving the snow some depth and that might be what's resulting in the current glitchiness of it all. Survival mode used to be the platform where they would introduce and experiment with things they were thinking about putting into Wintermute; and they might (maybe) be carrying on with some of that process even though they have technically split the two apart as separate games.

I've seen several animals moving through the snow rather than on top of it. Perhaps HL is working on introducing the idea that the snow layer has depth and eventually may create scenarios where we don't just walk on the topmost layer, but rather can break through that layer and have to "struggle" to get back on top again. These would be more realistic and would, perhaps, pave the way for snowshoes being introduced (and their being necessary to use).

Gunloper (that is, interloper settings in custom just with rifles and revolvers enabled) is a popular variant. You'll find several playthroughs on Youtube if you want to get a feel for it by watching someone else for a bit. You can refill ammo using the ammo forges in Bleak Inlet and Blackrock, so it's not the issue it once was.

I think it's much simpler than that - it's just an another affliction being added to the game and it won't really have any connection to whether or not the IRL an all meat diet provides enough Vitamin C. It will have a mechanic in the context of the game where it is possible to contract it and it will have an mechanic that players can use to avoid it and another one they can use to cure it. It's just another "pixel" parameter we have to which we have to pay attention. They can set Vitamin C levels in the foods anywhere. It doesn't really have to be connected closely to reality. They can also set the character's need for amounts of Vitamin C at any level, whether or not it is tied to the levels we actually need in real life. I don't think the devs are out to chastise or teach any lessons to any particular group of players for however they play the game and I certainly don't think they are out to teach any of us about nutrition. The goal is always the same for all - stay alive in game for as long as you can however you can - adapting to whatever circumstances the game's RNG throws at you.

Catching yourself looking for a "pass time till ready" button on the stove, especially when waiting for water to come to a boil.

There are some cool buffs even if getting the ingredients together can be a pain. My favorite is the meat pies since I discovered that, by eating one, you can go from being encumbered and unable to climb a rope to being unencumbered and able to climb.

In addition to the Wiki, if you pick up one of the new cooked items in the game (yes, on console), you'll see some blue and, possibly, some red text along with appropriate icons in the item description. For example, when holding my "Acceptable Peach Pie" is a blue eye icon followed by an up arrow and the word fatigue (which means eating this item will give a "reduce fatigue" buff. I also see a red head icon with a down arrow and the word headache. Red means this is a debuff, so it means it will give me a headache (which is a little wonky since one might think that the down arrow means it reduces a headache 😀)

Carry a flare or a least a torch when going out in the fog to help prevent being ganked by wolves. There's no wind and it's usually warmer than when it's clear, so it's not always desired to hunker down at that time. Learn the map and its landmarks well so that you can orient yourself even in the worst weather. (ETA - In areas where you know you're prone to getting disoriented and lost, you can place directiional marker arrows using spray paint or even by fashioning them out of tinder plugs (which you can get an endless supply of by harvesting them from sticks). You can also make them from stones or even just sticks, although these are less distinctive (that is, they are items that can be found in the natural environment, so you may find yourself wondering if that stick was placed there by you or just the wind). New survival suggestion, though - Always clear your fishing area of predators before starting to fish.😀

With a proviso - I don't think T-Wolves should be introduced at all into the 2 noted "beginner" zones of Mystery Lake and Mountain Town. I'd still like to preserve some parity between Wintermute and Survival; and T-wolves don't appear in the story until Ep. 3 with Astrid in Pleasant Valley. I'm OK with them staying as they are and with the toxic wolves only being found in the new toxic zone. GBI has different ecosystems and I'm OK with that, but I could live with them being introduced to more zones than two. The only thing I don't like is that turning T-wolves off in the custom menu does not replace them with regular wolves, but rather just causes wolves to become 1) non-existent in Bleak Inlet; and 2) Extremely rare in Blackrock.

Walking out of the Processing Plant and meeting the bear head on right at the corner of the building. Scared me so bad I somehow caused Will to jump back and get stuck right in a pile of debris in the yard such they he couldn't move at all as the bear charged forward. I thought he was absolutely done for... then, I laughed so hard when I realized there was no way for the bear to reach him either. Run would have still been basically over since I couldn't get him unstuck except that there had been no saves since the point when I had first entered the processing plant so it was just a matter of reloading. I still have no idea what I pressed on the controller that caused him to move in that manner. I've tried several times to get him into the same spot deliberately and I haven't been able to repeat it at all.

Scurvy can be prevent with lower amounts of Vitamin C than it takes to cure/reverse it. So, the additional item my be something with that higher concentration needed.

As a test in the custom menu and by pushing the fishing probability to "very high," I can verify that the rate of catch seems to have been slowed a little bit when fishing with a hook (based on rates noted from previous tests of the same settings in runs before the update). This is to be expected that they would have balanced the increase in opportunities to fish (that is, we can fish in more places in the world) with an overall decrease in the probability of catching fish. They would also want to encourage the use of the new lures and tip ups by having those devices be more likely to catch fish overall. I doubt it's a bug, but they may want to look at tweaking the rates back up a bit (at least on the lower settings).

That's good advice. However, we should keep in mind that not every new player will have bought Wintermute since it's now possible to purchase survival and Wintermute separately.

I wouldn't really want another "in your face" indicator just for vitamin C. If they add a vitamin C amount line to the description of each food item, we should be able to calculate on our own whether we're meeting whatever their target for consumption will be that keeps the disease at bay. The most likely scenario, I think, is the introduction of pine needle and/or spruce needle tea. Pine needle tea is how the Iroquois are credited with reversing scurvy in the crews of the early explorers to North America. They may also introduce bottles of vitamins.

With almost every food in TLD being recognized as a source of Vitamin C, it looks like scurvy should be almost impossible to get and they shouldn't have to add any new additional sources for vitamin C at all. 😀

While immersed in a TLD blizzard, not noticing that the actual temperature outside dropped by 10°C in the past hour and there is a real storm raging... until after finishing playing and trying to go out. [Sigh] - I guess we stay in tonight and look forward to shovelling out in the morning.