UpUpAway95

I did it once sub-24 hours, voyageur difficulty.  Got a spawn just below the rope to the Deer Clearing, decided to go up instead of down.  Took a nap in the secluded shelf cave.  Run ended on the summit though... no hacksaw and I just didn't feel like going back down.  Jumped and started a new run instead.

14 minutes ago, jeffpeng said:

That's actually a good point. Fully equipped you are almost overweight by default. A shotgun would weight in at around the same weight the rifle does. Now the reason I leave my rifle at home almost all the time is weight - and a shotgun with the same drawback would pretty certainly befall the same fate. The more I think about it .... nah, a shotgun really isn't the solution. (My G36 however would be  )

Jokes aside: For everything besides Timberwolves there already is the joker gun (Flare Pistol) ... and add yet another weapon just for Timberwolves - because, let's be honest: the only thing the revolver really is good at is fighting Timberwolves - I don't think so. And yes, the Flare Pistol is available enough for its intended usecase as a defensive only weapon, and it's easy enough to obtain when you know where it is.

Plus 

If you get parasites this late in the game you've done something wrong. I still usually avoid bears unless I need their hide - but more for the rather likely outcome of getting the frozen end of the stick, if you know what I mean 😉 Really late in a game, however, when wildlife dies out .... a bear can get you through a lot of winter.

Fair enough... my lack of experience with long-game interloper runs is showing since I cap everything at 500 days and, in interloper/stalker runs, I usually die much much earlier... usually to wolves.  The OP is suggesting that 75% of the meat would also be ruined, along with the hide... so I would think that would negate the late-game food benefit you're describing after wildlife dies out as well.  I think it would still be prudent, in that case, to leave the shotgun at home and take on the bear with the bow or rifle instead.

5 minutes ago, Alexg said:

Not reducing the spawn rate of ammo maybe sharing the locations of rifles and shotguns as the trappers cabin could contain either, or the dam and maybe one map contains either the shotgun or rifle or both or none

As for Ammon do make it not that your going around 60 shells killing everything the ammo should be significantly rarer Then the revolver or rifle maybe one box per map containing 4 shells that spawn near the shotgun spawn the rest must be crafted 

And besides for the moose and timber wolves  the animals are already easy enough to kill in my opinion if I wake up in game and say I’m gonna go kill a bear 9 outta 10 times I’ll find the bear and kill him easily unless i have little ammo I don’t mind luring the bear to a structured like a blind, hut or tree as most bear spawns are near some sort or structure and putting 3 or 4 bullets and he’s dead the difficulty comes with if your early to mid game and only have say 6 bullets in a revolver or 5-10 in a rifle and you don’t want to waste them on attempting to kill the bear if your not prepared either with energy or meds or a place up hide with a shotgun attempting to sneak round the bear and if he charges you, decide if you want to take the mauling or waste 2 of your shells and so don’t think you got away easily with that kill the gut hide and 75% of the meat becomes unusable 

The only reason to kill a bear late game is to get the hide to repair either your bearskin bedroll or your bearskin coat.  By that time in the game, players are usually proficient in 1) avoiding them and 2) killing deer with the bow as a source of safe meat (that doesn't present the risk of parasites).  If the hide is going to be ruined in the process, I am not going to be bothered carrying a shotgun in addition to my bow (or a rifle).  I don't want to see the availability of rifle ammo reduced (which also reduces the amount of casings in the game) to make way for a shotgun which would just be added weight I'd have to carry as a secondary "emergency" weapon for whenever I run out of rifle ammo... and a weapon that would ruin the hide as well.  I'd rather carry a flare gun for that purpose.  That way, if I do happen to kill the animal with the flare gun, I get the hide and all the meat as a bonus.

52 minutes ago, Alexg said:

Can anyone tell me where there are Birch saplings on ML been looking for an hr 

Sapling spawn points will generate birch or maple randomly, so where you find birch on one start, you may find maple on the next.  You may also randomly find nothing.  It's all RNG. 

That said... There are numerous possible spawn points in Mystery Lake, most of which are high up on slopes and in forested areas.  The saplings can be hard to spot amid the larger trees.  There is a common spawn point near the Trapper's Cabin on the hill that wraps around behind it and another couple if you keep following the rocky outcrop in either direction (i.e. towards the camp office or as it wraps around towards the Unnamed Pond area).  There are also a couple of possible spawn points in the hills above the Logging Camp Trailers.

28 minutes ago, Alexg said:

For new players though it’s very difficult to obtain a distress pistol or bow the only two spots Ino about are the rail car in the bottom of Ravine which requires mountain  rope and I’m unsure if it’s a guarantee spawn and the summit of timber wolf mountain which more then likely no new player will be travelling up anytime soon until they’ve played at least 150 hrs and know the basics and are borderline intermediate as for the bow there’s a lot of steps to using it for hunting first you need to find the sapling or just one lying about let the sapling cure then go to a forge craft arrow heads, cure birch saplings and collect crow feathers then you need to practice with the bow until you can actually hit a shot with I mean a deer wolf or rabbit is a easy to kill with some practice but a bear or moose is a 1 in a 1000000 shot to insta kill when I played the game for the first time in stalker/voyager there was no revolver and I wasn’t experienced enough to use the bow or get the distress pistol so I’d use the rifle for every thing defence and hunting and flares if I had them when the revolver came that solved the situation with wolfs both grey and timber but what about bears and moose one time i was gathering birch bark near the dam stumbled upon the moose and with the revolver fired 6 shots sloppily still got trampled and had broken ribs Next was heading back to the plane crash at night ran into that bear on the bridge fired all my shots still got mauled my point is the shotgun would be a guaranteed way to escape that situation with the pure intention of escape not hunting which is why I feel the hide and some meat being damaged is realistic I mean what do you think would happen if you shot a bear or moose with a dbs that the skin would be perfect (sorry for the long paragraph)

The flare pistol at the bottom of the Ravine is a guaranteed spawn and it is not that hard to get.  There is a strong chance that a mountain rope will spawn in the railcar at the top of the Ravine.  If not there, then there is usually one at the destroyed lookout in Mystery Lake.  Failing that, one can always be taken from a place where they are already deployed in the game (and Mystery Lake has two locations where the rope is already placed and where you don't need the rope to get down from (or even really need it to get up to) the top of it (i.e. the Western Access to the Lake or the Lake Overlook area).

You're proposing that shotgun ammo be a rare spawn and I could see Hinterland balancing the game by also reducing rifle and revolver ammo spawns and well as spawns of bows and arrows, just the same as how rifle spawns were reduced when the revolver was introduced.

As I said, I would love to have a single weapon that is effective against all predators; but I don't think that's what Hinterland wants to give us.  Beginner or not, they don't want to make it easy on us to kill off the wildlife.

I see your reasoning, OP; but I likely wouldn't even carry it if using meant the hide was lost.  I'm just not interested in carrying around a rifle for this and a revolver for that and a shotgun for something else.  However, if the hides are good, then the shotgun is going to basically make the rifle and revolver obsolete.  The revolver's stated purpose of scaring off wolves has been seriously nerfed as it is.  I'd love an all-purpose weapon that is effective against all predators; but I don't think that's what the devs want to give us.  The flare gun is about as good as it gets.

My longest run will forever be 500 days.  Whenever I go that long, I deliberately end it by jumping off the summit of TWM.  Of course, I still have a long way to go to get that far on the more difficult settings... my nemesis being the wolves.

I have seen several much longer runs on Youtube.  Differences in the settings can make a big difference and, IMO, make such comparisons relatively meaningless.

Regardless of whatever difficulty you were playing... congratulations on your accomplishment and I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Camera mode - check

Firecrackers - definitely check

Timberwolf hide - check

Sprain rework - check (although I just turn it off now)

Skis - meh

Difficulty levels - no comment

New animal - I'd prefer eagles and harbor seals.  They are more indigenous to the West Coast of Canada than either vultures or walruses.

i use it to call for help by firing it from the tail of the plane on TWM. 😃  It hasn't worked yet though.

1 hour ago, Martin Prchal said:

I just realized this would completely break Deadman since you cannot regain condition there so if your start is bad then rip. This would have to be a custom setting for sure and Deadman would likely be exempt from this.

I don't want this to have any impact on the player long term, I just want the start to be a bit more interesting. 

Since Deadman is itself a custom setting, I don't think it should be exempt (or conditional) upon other custom settings being set a certain way.  If an individual player decides to attempt a Deadman custom set along with a variable start condition custom setting, then they should be able to do so.  I just don't think the standard difficulties should have variable start conditions for the character.

14 minutes ago, Dan_ said:

Interesting, may I ask when exactly were these tests done?

Loot decay has been changed since, it really used to be that decay was started when you first entered a zone, not the case since pretty much 2 years ago. My 550 day interloper has found no food in containers at Bleak Inlet, anedoctal, but falls more in line with the curent state of the game I'd say. Granted, I did not loot the region entirely, yet. 

I started doing "loot tests" in earnest when the revolver was introduced since I and another poster noticed that the revolver was not spawning at the same frequency as the rifle (which Raph said, at the time, should be the case).  I did multiple starts in different regions and fully cleared those regions making notes of the loot.  I've continued noting such things for every start since then... and I always restart whenever there is an update or a hotfix.  (I'm retired and somewhat housebound these days... so I play a lot  and have accumulated a lot of hours in this game... mostly at easier difficulties levels though since I am not a skilled player when it comes to wolves and other predators.)  I've also always ended my saves at 500 days... just not interested in trying to go beyond that mark.

19 minutes ago, Serenity said:

Don't they have an increased risk by design? But I never got food poising from sardines. Or maybe once. And I've eaten some sketchy fish

Not really.... according to the Food Poisoning table in the Wiki:    https://thelongdark.fandom.com/wiki/Food_poisoning

Sardines below 20% condition are listed as having a 20% chance of food poisoning; whereas dog food below 20% condition is listed as having a 30% chance of food poisoning.

I don't know who supplied those rates or how they determined them.

2 minutes ago, Dan_ said:

Loot condition is random and recalculated from the game clock, meaning it doesn't matter if you first entered a region at day 200, the loot will degrade to day 200 according to game difficulty. Game difficulty affect decay rate greatly(Stalker has the base decay rate, items degrade 80% as fast on Voyageur, 25% as fast in Pilgrim and 200% as fast in Loper), so if you take too much time to explore other regions, is nearly guaranteed you won't find much food in containers since it'll have rotten away and vanished, you'll find loose food items though.

In regards to the OP, I do a lot of these myself, there's nothing wrong in playing the game the way you want to play. If anything, it makes the experience a lot more personal and enjoyable when you can roleplay a bit and impose your own limitations or rules to the game. My pet peeve is to use a fire to it's fullest, I always leave perfectly aligned bottles of water...everywhere. I'll also always take advantage of a maglens fire opportunity, even if I only boil a few liters of water. A free fire is a free fire, or so they say!

Then, how is it possible for me to have found 98% condition fisherman's sweaters on the summit of TWM when I first entered the zone around day 400 of a 500-day run and summitted, as I recall, somewhere around day 450 of that run?  Even in Pilgrim mode and if the sweaters spawned in at 100%, they should have decayed by more than 2% if the game clock was calculating that decay at 25% of the stalker rate to day 400 of the run. 

How is it possible, also, late in the run to loot the same house twice (by doing a bit of a save scum as a test) and get ragged condition the first time and new condition the second time?

I've been running these sorts of tests since I began playing the game... many, many Pilgrim starts and custom Pilgrim-like starts.  The results I'm seeing are just not consistent... indicative of some sort of randomizing factor.  I don't have the means or the wherewithal to data mine the code.  I don't know if it's intended or a bug.  These are just the results I'm seeing after many, many repeated tests.

17 minutes ago, Daymo said:

“Frankly, I think it's all just RNG”

I’m not sure about this. There is definitely some RNG involved but, different difficulties seem to equate to time since the disaster: pilgrim - days; interloper - months. The loot in a region seems to be generated when you first enter that region also. Start in TWM and immediately leave, then return on day 200 and you will find wrecked gear. Start in another area and visit TMW for the first time on day 200 and gear will be in better condition.

On the other hand, I could be talking nonsense, it’s a difficult thing to test. 😁

Except - I have found wrecked clothing on the first day I entered a new zone around day 50 on Pilgrim.  I have also tested it by looting houses once, noting the gear and condition and then exiting without generating a save and doing it a second time.  Generally, I get the same gear (that is, say, if the dresser yielded a thin sweater the first time, it will usually (not always) generate a thin sweater the second time)... but the condition is usually different... sometimes better and sometimes worse.  From what I've seen, it is random... or at the very least, mostly random.

ETA:  Of course, all these tests I've run regarding loot locations and condition are on lower difficulties since I don't survive long enough at the higher difficulties to complete such tests.

I'm absolutely in favor of this as a custom setting, although I don't really see how it would have any great effect on a player's strategy for a playthrough long-term.  The moment the player sleeps and regains condition or heals that sprain, it becomes a rather moot setting.

As part of a standard difficulty, I see little point in giving a player a starting affliction if that player has no chance of having the necessary items close at hand to treat the condition.  The save would become doomed from the start... and might as well not be started at all.  I would imagine a lot of players would soon develop the habit of starting a save, looking quickly at the condition of their character and, if not good, simply deleting that save themselves and start another.  It would become a form of "farming" for a good start.

I've played several different saves on the lower difficulties to beyond 300 days.  I'm not good at interloper where my average survival is still under a week. 

I'm not absolutely convinced that everything starts to degrade right away.  On one 500-day file (Pilgrim), I found 98% fisherman's sweaters (about 3 of them) on the summit of Timberwolf Mountain.  In that file, TWM was the last location I went to since my character's plan was to suicide by jumping off TWM on day 500.  On my most recent save (custom, low decay rate), the fisherman's sweater I found on the summit on Day 15 was at 22%.

Frankly, I think it's all just RNG... perhaps with the odds of ruined items being generated increasing as the days progress, but still with a chance of spawning in items in good condition.

6 hours ago, Morrick said:

I consider the sardines in The Long Dark an enemy, not food. They're sneaky and vicious. Absolutely unpredictable. What was the first thing ever that gave me food poisoning? You guessed right. What was the condition of that tin of sardines? 78%. I still remember as if it were yesterday. What food poisons you at 78%? I was so mad when that happened. Totally caught me unprepared.

And yet… I'm in Bleak Inlet now, and very low on food. Out of desperation, I collected the tins of sardines in better condition (ranging from 34% to 47%), and when I reluctantly ate them… nothing. I've been eating at least 6 or 7 tins in those conditions, but every time all went well. I even pushed my luck with a tin that was at 25% condition. All okay. Either I've been impossibly lucky, or the sardines in the cannery are 'special'. 

I don't know if the chances of food poisoning change with interloper, but I've gotten food poisoning from sodas in the past.  In fact, my first case of food poisoning cam from a Stacy's soda that was at 48%.  I remember being shocked because I had just seen a Youtube video where the player had declared sodas 100% safe regardless of their condition.  I have also eaten sardines as low as 22% and not gotten food poisoning from them.  As I posted above, I got food poisoning from 3 consecutive cans of sardines at the Cannery (after also watching a Youtube video where the player declared sardines perfectly safe as long as you ate them when you first picked them up).

The thing with RNG is that it is RNG... random and adverse to being predictable.  I really don't think the sardines in the cannery are special.  I think you've been impossibly lucky, just as I was impossibly unlucky.  Same game, same odds... different role of the dice.  The only certainty is that antibiotics and 10 hours of sleep cures it.  I carry lots of those little pills or lots of reshi teas and, as much as possible, I eat just before going to sleep.

I think it would require a lot of re-voice work overall and I'm not convinced it would be worth the added expense.  I would prefer the quippish lines involving the character's condition be parsed down to just the straight-forward phrases that already exist like "I'm getting a little bit thirty." and "I'm so cold."

We do actually have a renewable foraging food source now in Birch Bark Trees.  The bark does respawn and it is possible in games with Pilgrim resource settings to survive in an area like the Ravine completely on birch bark teas alone since they do respawn with enough frequency.  What concerns me... if they increase the variety of the things we can forage, they will cut back on the amount of each foraging item that already exists in the world... so we would have, in games set with low resource availability, a shortage of reshis and rosehips in favor of items that are merely food and don't provide any medicinal value.  It's unlikely that Hinterland would just increase the availability of food without trying to rebalance it to maintain the "survival" aspects of the game.  I also think that part of the recent increase in difficulty in killing wolves was rooted in the brags of players who were saying they were killing them in the hundreds and "swimming in meat" in their longer run games.

4 hours ago, peteloud said:

I am beginning to think that the game might be better if custom modes were removed.

One of the interesting aspects of playing the game is comparing your playing of the game with other people's playing of the game.  I do not mean that in a competitive way, but with a learning objective.   When I play TLD I don't have any interest in doing better than anyone else, but I do like to find out how others tackle particular problems and find out about things that I might have missed.

If everyone is playing at a different custom level it is difficult to compare your experiences with the experiences of others.  For example I might puzzled by why I am freezing and struggling to survive the night in a fishing hut, then I see that someone else seems to be in a similar situation but not on the point of death from hypothermia.  If everyone is playing a different game because of customisation then it is difficult to compare experiences and learn from others.

If there is a limited set of fixed levels of play I would know that another person playing at the same level as me is experiencing the same problems therefore I can learn from their handling of a particular problem.

Having written all of that, my favourite level of play is a custom Stalker game with the wolves turned down one level.

 

Comparisons on a learning basis are still possible using custom modes... just share the code.  It allows for more and different comparisons that are not rooted in this culture of "difficulty."  IMO, they would be more meaningful.

10 hours ago, Ice Hole said:

Did not know about the rotating effect.  I only saw if from afar during an interloper run and was harvesting a deer.  Just fabricated tools bow and arrow.  Next stop will be  the lighthouse right after Mr. Bear's appointment. 

If you get a chance, let me know if the light itself is actually rotating when you're inside the lighthouse or if they're just using a rhythmic blinking to create the effect.  I wanted to climb the stairs and have a look, but unfortunately the aurora ended just as I reached the door.  In hindsight, I should have dropped the deer meat I had and lightened my load to move faster.

I've been ninja'd by Ico Hole, but here is my most recent shot of it:  The light also rotates, which is why it is brighter in the first shot.

It's nothing.  Should naught be a problem.

I agree with @ThePancakeLady on this one.  It is a single-player game.  I do believe, however, that people who modify their saves and then try to pass their accomplishments off without revealing the modifications are indeed being dishonest with others, not just themselves... but as was so aptly said, we all have the option to just shrug off their bragging.  People who modify their files and are open about it with others are not cheaters, although they are, IMO, being disrespectful of the devs who have not approved the use of mods in their game.

I'm not adverse to there being a designation that a file has been modified though, as long as it isn't done in such a way that it is "punishment" to the player and that it does not label the player in any way as being a "cheater" etc.  If Hinterlands ever does approve mod support, then there will, no doubt, be many different ways in which people will modify their saves... not only to make the easier, but also to make them more challenging or more storied or more enjoyable for themselves and others to play.  That's not a bad thing.

An unpopular opinion of mine stated previously is that difficulty settings should just be elminated and the custom menus be used... eliminating this basis of comparison and argument about who is and who is not a "good player" and freeing up people to play the game using whatever combination of all the available settings they most enjoy.  I know it's an unpopular stance... but it still is my preferred alternative towards ending this ongoing dilemma over relative difficulties.

9 minutes ago, Morrick said:

I thought I could get away with it, haha! I mean, in the same way you don't have to collect several rocks and logs to make a campfire. In the same way you don't have to go fetch 1-2 kilograms of snow every time you want to make water. I based my idea for a marker on these and other similar shortcuts the game allows you. 

Fair enough. 

Water and campfires are more in-game necessities than trail markers, though... and you do spend a larger than realistic amount of time chopping up limbs and breaking down branches that, I think, makes up for it.  Trail markers would be purely a luxury.

I thought of another marker you could use that does stand up... snares.  They would likely ruin before you came back to them and would probably be less visible at a distance than campfires; but it is still an option.