UpUpAway95

37 minutes ago, hozz1235 said:

I don't agree this is "grindy", in fact it's an achievement you will get through normal play (if you live long enough).

Pretty much every achievement out there can be obtained through normal play as long as the player is willing to devote hundreds of hours of their life into playing the game.  It is grindy because, if the player is playing the game to maximum efficiency, then it will take them all that much longer before they need to mend clothing the number of times that the game requires to earn the achievement.  Similarly, if one is just killing animals when they absolutely need the meat, then it will take them all that much longer to shoot the requisite 50 animals to earn the achievement.  Ditto on catching 500 fish (the number needed to get that to Level 5).   My pilgrim's ability to survive much longer than 500 days is not in doubt.  He'll survive, but I would rather kill him off on Day 500 and have more time to play on challenges and in Wintermute, etc.  Additionally, I don't want to invest 473 days in a file trying to get a 500-day achievement, only to die and have to start such a long and time consuming achievement over again... that's why I opted to do it on an easy difficulty.  For those who think that game achievements need to be inordinately difficult to be achievements, may I remind you that Minecraft hands out an achievement for opening your inventory... along with numerous others than can be obtained within the first few minutes of starting the tutorial and has considerable achievements that can be done on Peaceful difficulty.

5 hours ago, peteloud said:

". . . I found the easiest way to maintain a clip of two mends per day . . . "

 

TLD is meant to be an experience in survival in harsh conditions, not a game about sewing.

 

As I've indicated, I have other save files for that.  This achievement (Skilled Survivor) is ultimately about cooking about 500 things, catching about 500 fish, killing X number of animals with the rifle and then killing so many more with the bow, and then doing about 300 to 350 mends on your clothing.  It's a ridiculously grindy achievement that has very little to do with surviving in harsh conditions.  You can rag on me all you like for finding a way to do this achievement without having to start it over numerous times in numerous different, harder file saves because of repeated permadeaths; but perhaps your time would be better spent petitioning the devs to get rid of these grindy achievements and replace them with more ones like the 24-hour Interloper survival one... i.e. ones that are specific to a certain difficulty level and/or challenge mode.  The same holds true for the 500-day one.  The devs could easily change it so that it applies to a specific difficulty level.  Right now, it applies to all survival difficulties, which includes custom and includes all settings available to every person playing on custom.

I found the easiest way to maintain a clip of two mends per day is to sleep each night in the bedroll even if there is a bed available.  That guarantees that the bedroll will drop to 99% from 100% each and every day guaranteeing one repair each day.  If I'm not doing much outside (on Pilgrim), the clothing may not drop each day, but usually at least 2 items will drop to 99% every second day.  So, there's no need to risk ruining clothes by mountain goating or to needlessly stand outside during blizzards to get this done by Day 500.

I returned to ML and scavenged every bit of cloth from the dam and lakeside cabins in the process.  I now should also be set with enough cloth to make the 150 mends needed.  I also found 20 more bullets, so I should be good to Rifleman Level 5 as well as long as I stay careful and accurate.

On 3/4/2019 at 8:16 PM, Gooner77 said:

Before starting this challenge I knew on 1 sure fire way to get to the Homestead. *Spoiler* I am now on my 4th Keg Stand run and have found at least 3 or 4 guaranteed ways to the Homestead without falling through the ice. There is one path that I have found that is at most twice as wide as my shoulders and I have fallen through and survived on this run as I was already cold and went straight to sleep. I'm not sure if falling through the ice de-aggro'd the bear as it was stalking me at the time. 

Like a stubborn old fool (which I am), I keep trying to find a path around the edge from the Broken Railroad entrance and wide up getting squeezed out onto the ice to get around a particular boulder a short distance before getting to the homestead.  I've only successfully made it once without falling in... and on that run I found a campfire with a corse and a rifle somewhere in that vicinity.  Needless to say, I haven't found that encampment again either.  I think there must be a higher path and a way around that boulder that I'm just not seeing.

4 minutes ago, BareSkin said:

I never went as far as that in a Skater run, they have all been pitiful... I even manage to die from a fall (my only time), avoiding a bear.

Forlorn Muskeg is my real nemesis zone... I've managed to fall through the ice in virtually every attempt I've tried to get to Spence's Homestead.  On easier difficulties, I've managed to survive to get to land, build a snow shelter and warm up.  Of course, no such luck on Loper.

Waiting with great anticipation for the next instalment.  Were you able to get Sir Wolf separated from his kill without injury?

1 hour ago, peteloud said:

". . . mashing the "pass time" function for days on end just to speed up  . . ."

Set yourself a personal objective that takes several days of activity.   Try and fill in all of the black spaces on your maps.

Yeah, like stocking up on some rabbit pelts, right?  I don't do the "pass time" thing... in short, I AM playing the game the way it was intended to be played.  The only thing I'm not doing is trying to get this Pilgrim to survive beyond Day 500... I want to end him on that day if I can get my remaining Survival achievements before that day.  If I can't get them on time, then I will carry on with him beyond Day 500 until all achievements are obtained.

I've worked out my mending schedule.  I'm at day 364 and have just now flipped over from Level 3 to Level 4 mending.  According to what I've read online, that means I need to get 150 successful repairs in before Day 500 to get to Level 5 mending so I can get this achievement and still jump from TWM on Day 500 as planned.  I have  145 cloth stored in Pleasant Valley and anoth 30 in TWM.  I don't have enough sewing kits to make that many repairs, so I will have to make some fishing line.  The good news is that I should be able to degrade at least 2 items a day from 100% to 99% so that I can repair them.  That should keep me on schedule.

The unknown remaining is the number of rifle hits I need to make before Day 500 and before I run out of bullets.  I have 55 bullets between Pleasant Valley and TWM.  I might have left some in Mystery Lake, so my next move is to make a journey back that way to check.  I also can try heading back out to Coastal Highway to do some beachcombing for cartridges.

8 hours ago, peteloud said:

Just play the game as its meant to be played.  When you shortcut and manipulate getting an achievement you are cheating yourself.

Spending time hunting to stock up on rabbit pelts to be able to make a sufficient number of mends to get the achievement before running out of cloth sure beats mashing the "pass time" function for days on end just to speed up how fast the clock ticks to get to Day-500.

On 3/1/2019 at 9:05 AM, NardoLoopa said:

As to the original question:

It took me 56 Rifle hits to get my rifle to level 5 (from level 1).  I'm not sure about reading for this.  No more than one Guns,Guns,Guns book, though (if any).

Total fish caught was 530.9kg to get to level 5.  Don't remember how many books: maybe two?

The long pole for me was Mending.  From day 165 to 500 I was in "retirement" mode, just passing the days.  I didn't really want to blow through all my cloth, just for a dumb achievement.  So, I developed the following strategy:

• Farm lots of rabbit pelts
• Stand outside in every blizzard until my rabbit stuff was 99%.
• Go in.  Repair.  Go back outside in the blizzard

I also made two wolf coats for this same reason, but they are much more resilient than rabbit items, though the pelts were easier to come by.

That;s a great strategy with the rabbits.  I've got several pelts already.  Thanks for the count on rifle shots.  I definitely should be OK then on bullets to make Level 5.  I think I'm going to back off trying to tear my clothes mountain goating... don't want to ruin them outright since they are the only ones I have that haven't already been reduced to cloth.  If mending takes me past Day 500, so be it.  He'll jump from TWM when he jumps then.

35 minutes ago, hozz1235 said:

Nope, just mending existing clothes.  Since you have so few clothing items to mend, and if you have an abundance of cloth, you can just mend anytime something drops below 100%...

As a side note, there is so much cloth available in the game (curtains, couches, etc.) you should save numerous "backup" clothing items (e.g. I have about 10 pairs of socks that I will not break down).  This is especially true for items which suffer struggle damage.  Then again, there are craftable counterparts for most of those.

Kind of figured... but I was hoping.   Yep, I do regret all the harvesting I did thinking I was saving weight.  I could just keep playing it safe and probably have to go beyond the 500-Day mark to get the skill up to Level 5 or I can start getting a little careless while goating around and, hopefully, just tear some items a bit and not ruin them, so that I can mend more frequently and get the skill to Level 5 by Day 500.  It would help to know about how many repairs I need to make to get there.  I'm about 3/4ths of the way through Level 3 now.  Any guessimates?  This guy is on Pilgrim difficulty, so thankfully no struggles and his ability to survive now to Day 500 is not really in any doubt (unless I get really careless goating around, that is).

My Rifleman is about 2/3rds (correction: 1/2 - looking at journal) through Level 4 and I have about 50 bullets (maybe more) that I know of stored around the world.  I'm pretty accurate, so I'm confident I'll make Level 5 there without running out of bullets.  If I'm short, there are probably more bullets lying around in the world that I've just overlooked while looting).  I also have an ample number of cleaning kits and 3 rifles at above 80% condition currently (also stored in various locations in the world).

1 hour ago, peteloud said:

If people are so keen to get these achievements then play at  'baby'  level.  Perhaps you could even make it easier by setting up a custom level with everything set to the easiest setting.

Alternatively, just sit watching the TV, that's easier still.

 

Absolutely.  I certainly wasn't about to invest so many hours in trying to get my Faithful Cartographer, 500-Day, and this max'd out skills achievement while risking permadeath at every turn.  I've got other file saves on harder difficulties for that.  It's not my fault the achievements for this game are so time consuming and "grindy."

51 minutes ago, piddy3825 said:

Faithful Cartographer...  I just always forget to sketch as I typically empty my pack of all those annoying heavy chunks of charcoal...

The mending is easy enough until you run out of sewing kits or fishing tackle.  If you clean out CH of all their curtains, you'll easily have over a hundred or more pieces of cloth.  I just go outside on a nice day and mend everything I have from sun up to sun down, gets the job done and you can avoid cabin fever.  

I have cloth... I don't have more clothes than what's on my back... and because I'm in Pilgrim, they aren't degrading very quickly.  I harvested every other piece of clothing I found throughout the game.  Had I not done that, I'd have more clothes I could mend to get the skill level up.  Does crafting new clothing increase mending skill?

ETA:  I've literally just stumbled on a way to speed up the degradation of my clothes... mountain goating.  Problem solved - I'm positive now I can arrange to get all skills to Level 5 by Day 500.

4 minutes ago, NardoLoopa said:

I'm probably alone in this, but I would fine the ability to jump "immersion breaking" (a term thrown about as if it were some sort of cardinal sin).  Jump, with 40kg on your back?  While wearing 2 pair of work-pants on top of 2 pair of wool thermals?  Right.  "Straddle" I could see.  Jump?  No.  Actually, I'd find typical FPS jump animation to be pretty silly in TLD.

And really, I find the inability to jump a nice comfort, so I don't have to stand near some cliff-side pressing the "hop" button to see if I can inch up Skyrim style.  Yes, I will agree that being caught up by a bit of fence poking out of the ground is annoying . . . a tad.  But I kinda enjoy that Hinterland took away a ubiquitous (and often silly) mechanic that plagues the first person experience in most games.

Would be funny if they implemented "Jump" with some very involved animation and grunts from the voice-actor, as they squat and then lift themselves 1cm into the air, only to come down over the obstacle with zero sprint left and a sprained ankle.

Perhaps "hop" or "skip" is a better term for what I was thinking about... the ability to lift a foot high enough to get over, say, the curbs in front of the store at the Rural Crossroads or the ability to get up onto some of the logs lying down in the Forlorn Muskeg without having to pace back and forth to find that sweat spot where the game will let the player climb up that few inches.

3 hours ago, Wolfbait said:

One of the best turn-based tactical combat simulators ever created, called "Chess", has very little realism and the set of rules is very limited. However, you must be a true genius to become a Master. I try to apply to TLD the same standard: They proposed a set of rules to emulate a survival experience.

I have to admit I've been losing grip with TLD during the last year. I've spent (invested, enjoyed... you name it) over 1.000 hours and it's not the set of rules which prevented me to enjoy the game, but some technical limitations:

1. Not to be able to jump/prone/climb. Please don't say AGAIN that you are tired, cold, encumbered... Please, don't. You can't even step up 10cm slopes while naked and well-feed. It's a technical limitation. The engine is complex, mapping takes time, etc. It's a limitation. And when you are cornered by a pack of Wolves, you'd want to climb the nearest tree or run tirelessly due to the adrenaline, not to mention getting over that 70cm (2ft) fence.
2. Interior lights are broken. In minutes it can get pitch black even in full moon. Damn it, you can only see your breath. Even in warm interiors you keep seeying you damn breath. Please stop it!! I'm wearing a scarf to cover my mouth so I can stop seeing it!!! To no avail
3. AI is... there is not. 

Every now and then I try new runs. I love the pace and relaxing atmosphere, the challenge... but eventually I get some inmersion breaking experience that remembers me why I quited.

You'll have to explain to me why you find the last two images "immersion breaking."  For the first... Are mirages in a desert "immersion breaking."  I have seen sunrises and sunsets that are very intense and almost make the horizon look like it's on fire.  I've also seen many, many very bright sunny days that were bitterly cold.  Also, this game has an art style to it that is not realism... more based on Canada's "Group of Seven" artists like Emily Carr and Tom Thomson.  I do agree that the interiors can be annoyingly and unnecessarily dark, particularly at dusk and dawn and during moonlit nights.  I'd also love to be able to jump.  I've played many games that don't grant the player the ability to go prone, though.  Personally, just crouching is fine for me.

I think the number of fish needed is around 500.  I just recently got Level 5 fishing in my Faithful Cartographer save (pilgrim) and my journal shows 508 fish caught.  I did read every Angler magazine I found (not sure if I've found them all though).  My rifleman is up to Level 4 with 20 shots taken and 19 hits.  I was unable to read all the Frontier Shooting Guides I found because I read the Advanced Guns, Guns, Guns.  I think you get more out of them if you don't read the Advanced Guns ones until after you've found and read all the Frontier Shooting ones.

I'm confident I'll get the Rifleman up to 5 before I run out of bullets.  The one that might hang me is the Mending one.  Unfortunately, I've harvested most of the clothes I'm not using and stored the cloth... and, on Pilgrim, I'm just not wearing down the clothing I'm wearing very fast.  My Mending is only at Level 3... but I do have about 175 days to go to get to 500.  Hopefully, it'll get up to Level 5 before then.  I'm still hoping to jump of TWM on Day 500.

19 minutes ago, admin said:

 

I have filled out the poll that I'm primarily interested in Story Mode.  I did want to explain though that I'm currently avoiding playing through story mode in anticipation of the next episode being released.  Ideally, I'd like to be able to start and finish the entire story (all 5 episodes) without a huge break between them... although I also realize that's not too likely to happen since I won't be able to hold off starting to play story mode for that long.  In the meantime, I am enjoying playing Survival Mode, but I can see where I will get bored with it eventually, regardless of difficulty setting.  I think it's great that this game is offering both in separate modes (as opposed to trying to combine a plot-driven story into a huge open=world game... which, it seems to me, doesn't work very well.  Keep up the good work.

I've seen the blood trail mysteriously just end on several occasions.  The official explanation is that the animal does slow down and stop bleeding while they are walking; usually I find the trail ends suddenly when they run right over a rock.  I often find I simply cannot pick up the trail on the other side of the rocks.  At that point, I generally check my journal "kill count" to see if the animal has died so I have a bit of an idea of how far away from where the trail disappeared they may have gotten before they fell... and then I resort to a grid search.  Sometimes I find them, sometimes I don't.

However, be aware that there is also a bug that appears to cause some animals to reset (e.g. heal) if the player goes inside a building or otherwise leaves the map.

Everything in my first aid training was telling me that it would be pulling the knife out that would also actually be a death sentence by hastening the blood loss.   I wanted the option to tell him that just leaving it alone was probably what was keeping him alive, and then have him ask me again to pull it out in order to end his miserable life.  I wanted saving him to involve actively bandaging the wound with the knife still in place to stop the bleeding.  In my mind, pushing it in or pulling it out was the same choice - to kill him.

1 hour ago, Tetrs said:

@vargata I think that there's just a lack of interaction with the environment, as you said, IRL you could easily grab a bigger branch a take it near the fire, etc. but I don't think that TLD is an illogical game. It has logic, but it's own logic. It's different from irl, yes, however it's not illogical.

 

I still disagree with this... dragging anything through deep snow is a monumental task.  Moving a large branch that has sat frozen into deep snow for any length of time is a monumental task.  What is not realistic is how, in this game, you easily walk across the top of the snow without the benefit of snowshoes or skis; particularly when large amounts of fresh snow is falling every couple of days.  IRL, we'd be sinking to our knees and waists with every single step.

12 minutes ago, vargata said:

yes, they are not stupid, but if he was alone, it could end pretty differently... in Transylvania the govt ordered shooting hundreds of wolves and bears as they were attacking the villages and the villagers.

You're still cherry picking what you choose to see as illogical and what you're willing to accept for the sake of gameplay.  Wolves attacking the player at every moment he/she steps outside a door in the game is every bit as illogical as a full-grown buck dressing out at only 10 kg of food and eating 2 kg of venison to fill one's food bar from a nearly empty state.  The game is situated in Canada and wolves here have historically been far more timid than they have been reported to be in Europe.  They are, in fact, rarely even seen by the hundreds of thousands of visitors that come to the National Park in the Canadian Rockies each year.

2 minutes ago, vargata said:

true in normal situation when food is abundant, not at all true when its scarce. wolves will happily attack you if there is no others stuff available and the game is all about an event when wildlife is acting up.

Then, if you want realism, you'd have to remove all those rabbits from the game because I'm quite certain the wolves in the game are quite well fed.  In addition, the place where my son was encamped was on an island in the far north of Canada (neighboring landmass belongs to Russia).  Food was most likely not abundant and the reason why the wolves were encircling the camp.  Even in that extreme circumstance, no wolves attacked the camp... no wolves had to be shot to protect the work party.

46 minutes ago, vargata said:

who burns individual sticks? you make a campfire from them and they can last many hours, i mean the sticks you collect simply by picking them up and yes, i did drag many big branches to the fire, not complete trees but in the game you dont touch the cut down trees either, those are limbs that you can easily drag to the fire, also the branches...

The game mechanic allows you to start a fire with an individual stick and that fire will last about 10 minutes.  IRL, you would probably start the fire with half a dozen and tinder and feed a few sticks onto the fire at frequent intervals to keep it going longer.  If you didn't feed it additional fuel, however, it would (with the soft woods you collect in the BC Rockies) only last a few minutes and never reach a high enough temperature to cook.  Fallen limbs can range in size and easily weigh 100 to 200 pounds.  Frozen in place, you would never drag them anywhere yourself.  Even a 50 lb limb for Astrid would be an nearly impossible drag through snow and not unreasonable to think it would take her an hour to break it up with a little camp hatchet (not an axe or a log splitter).

I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that what you're sizing a limbs in your mind are labeled as branches in the game and the sticks you're collecting are of a largish variety, not the little ones I used to collect from the forest floor as a child to feed into our camp fires.

If you want realism, then also you'd only ever play on Pilgrim.  In all the time I've spent in the Canadian wilderness, I've only ever seen two wolves and both ran rather than attack me.  In the far north, my son was in a camp where there was a pack of wolves moving about the outskirts of their camp in a threatening manner, but they also never attacked (having never spotted a weak individual apart from the group that they would feel comfortable taking out)  In our area, coyotes are far more common, but are generally only a danger to small dogs (when people are foolish enough to have them in their party).  I've seen several black bears (treed one or two from horseback)  and a few grizzlies and never been mauled by a single one.  Moose can be dangerous if a person gets close enough to cause them to feel threatened, but generally mind there own business otherwise.  Healthy wildlife simply don't stalk and attack people normally.  (PS.  I don't hunt - I've never even owned a gun... and even without one, I've felt perfectly safe camping for my entire life.)

25 minutes ago, vargata said:

did you ever make an outdoor fire from sticks? sticks that you can just pick up and throw on the fire WILL burn for hours for you, branches that you can break down by hand can be broken down in seconds, especially small ones that only gives you 3 sticks and limbs that gives you wood like in the game can be cut up with an axe in 10-15 min, the difference is that in real life you dont just throw it all in the stove, you need to feed the fire. if it would work like this, true, the collecting wood would be less challenging but keeping the fire alive and a house warm would be a bigger challenge, especially if you could freeze in the house. this would give more reasons to go out but each run would be more doable, instead of going out to get a single limb but freezing to death while you cut it up  dragging it closer to the fire would also make it more interesting. back in the old time somebody noted that collecting sticks in the arms could also be done and that would again be more interesting than just handling it as an item in your pocket. but i see you dont understand the topic itself. its not about the game being hard, its about being illogical...

I grew up camping and trail riding in the mountains between Alberta and BC and have made many campfires from sticks there.  The soft woods you normally collect there burn very rapidly and the little sticks you just pick up do not last "for hours" each stick.  You are lucky if individual sticks give you a few minutes of fire... and certainly not a fire hot enough to cook on.  You would simply not dray a large tree to a fire through snow to chop it up... my ancestors uses horses to do that job and in the snow it was often all the team could do to get the thing moving at all.  You see, they freeze into the snow and are essentially immovable.

1 hour ago, vargata said:

yes, this is a point, but finding food shouldnt be the drive to go out, it should be exploration, hunting for resources and primarily heat, whenever I was out in the nature that was the most pressing matter. get enough wood to have a fire all night but in this game even that is ridiculous, chopping a piece of wood with an axe takes hours and you cant even drag it close to the fire  really? Hunting also should be much more challenging, having less animal and running further away on an unsuccessful attempt or straight away hiding, for now its just ridiculously simple. go there, shoot miss wait while calms down rinse and repeat...

The availability of sticks is also something that can be set ranging from low to high in custom mode.  If you feel that chopping a log takes too long, increase the availability of sticks and use only those on your fires.  I sincerely doubt that, IRL, you're going to drag a 100-200 lb tree to your fire in deep snow and freezing cold so you can chop it up.  Realistically, you'd find something smaller, so making fires out of sticks only replicates that scenario.  IRL, little sticks don't burn for 10 whole minutes either.  If you just size things up in your mind a bit, the game makes logical sense - Just call the current sticks you just pick up branches, the branches that take 10 minutes to break down by hand limbs, and the current limbs large limbs or even small fallen trees.  Sure, if you take the time to chop up a large limb, you would get more wood IRL, but the game has adjusted those amounts downward just the same as they've adjusted carcass dressed weight downward.

If your reason for going outdoors is truly exploration, then just don't hunt so much while you're exploring and, as was suggested, set both animal spawns to low and your calorie usage also to low.  If you want to make hunting easier to you are swimming in food, then set deer and moose spawns to high and you'll have soon have more meat in your larder than you'll know what to do with.  You can always pretend that each 1 kg steak is only 1/4 of that size so eating so much doesn't offend your IRL sensibilities.  What's nice about this game is that you do have the ability to balance the game mechanics as you wish without mods (more than any other game I've played).  Part of what enables this adjustment range by the player is that the weights and sizes of things are not necessarily realistic.  Sure, refinements are still likely in the works, but I applaud the devs for what they've accomplished so far.