UpUpAway95

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).

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

Some ability to select specific starting gear in custom might be nice, but I could see it being easily exploited. Perhaps they could design thematic groups for the starting gear, but leave the specifics somewhat random. So, your soldier might get combat pants and an MRE, but no rifle on one start and might get the rifle and no combat pants on another). Perhaps they could also add the ability to select one skill book to add to the starting kit instead of arbitrarily creating fixed skill-based classes of characters. The player already can do some of this by selecting feats. More feats could perhaps be added so that players could earn them and then use them to enhance their characters in more different ways.

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.

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.

Then please elaborate as to what different purposes the other makeshift shelters could have within the confines of the game that would make them add something more to the gameplay than just looking different. Making a permanent shelter would have a clearly different purpose, but I really don't see where the purpose of one makeshift shelter differs in a tangible way from another one. It's a suggestion worth expanding upon. Here's an idea to get it started - How about rather than just different looking makeshift shelters, Hinterland lets us build (somehow) our own fishing huts. Then we could fish on any river, pond or lake in the game.

Correction to my post above: "Even though cloth may be currently required to make one of the items (bear skin bedroll), it isn't required to repair them. (Sorry for my confusion.)

I'm all for allowing us to craft arrow shafts, assemble arrows and continue to sew hide items while away from a workbench. I don't see where having the ability to construct different looking structures as storm shelters would serve a huge purpose in the game that the current terrain and snow shelters can't easily serve. As I said, the terrain given to us in the game is such that one should never be so far away from a natural windbreak to be stuck out in the open in a blizzard and needing to rest. Firstly, the game telegraphs the approach of blizzards by crows flying and clouds forming and winds starting to pick up, which allows sufficient time for an unencumbered player to locate and get to at least some form of natural shelter. As you say, a lean-to requires "a few logs" Are you suggesting that a player should then be able to find logs, drag them to a chosen location, find pine boughs and pack those to the same location and construct a lean-to in a blizzard in less time than they can just locate a natural windbreak?. As I said, if people want to bog down their game packing around materials and tools to construct more complex structures, I say let them. I don't really see most players using such a mechanic to shelter themselves from an onsetting blizzard. I would rather they invest in giving us an advancement from merely surviving to actually thriving and becoming permanently settled in the game... represented by allowing us to eventually develop skills to construct an actual log cabin of our own somewhere in the game. As I've also said, the net usage of cloth for temporary shelters can be easily remedied by having more cloth returned to the player upon dismantling of the shelter. The usage of cloth for clothing essentially becomes obsolete in the game once the player accumulates enough hides to make clothing. Even though cloth may be currently required to repair some of the items, it doesn't prevent the player from simply manufacturing new ones to replace ones that are wearing out instead of making repairs.

However, it's easier to use the natural terrain as a windbreak rather than piling up snow as a windbreak. On most maps I've been, there are lots of indentations in the rocks and even small hidden caves that provide wind protection from multiple directions. Even the Pleasant Valley map (which has a large open area) has features that can be used as wind breaks (e.g. hay bales and the snow plow ridges along the various "roadways."

If people want to bog their game down moving about sheets of metal and packing more weight in the form of screwdrivers and pliers, I say let them... but make it so that the predatory animals will always attack more frequently whenever the player is overencumbered and that being attacked while overencumbered ensures that the player will suffer greater amounts of damage than during other attacks based on the idea that the player is likely more tired from carrying more weight and is less agile and, therefore, less able to avoid taking damage and less able to fight back effectively. Also, make it so that the drawing of a bow or aiming of a rifle occurs much more slowly when the player is overencumbered.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

I've watched players on interloper eating a lot less than 2-3 pieces of venison per day and surviving just fine in the game; so I'm pretty sure it can be done on stalker as well.

I think you're exaggerating how much you're actually eating. I've never been able to eat a whole deer in this game to fill the hunger meter. Each pieces of venison (1 kg) provides around 900 calories; so 2 to 3 pieces a day is easily keeping me well fed.

I generally leave my cooking pots on the wooden stove in whatever place I'm using as a main base for that region of the map. For example, I now have 3 cooking pots on the 3 back burners of the stove in the Pleasant Valley farmhouse. If I find more pots, I'll bring them to that location as well. I have 5 pots sitting on the stove in Gray Mother's house and two sitting on the fire barrel in Quincy's Quonset. That way, I don't have to mess with finding a can or pot if I want to boil water or make tea but I can still cook meat and fish without removing them from the burner. I haven't verified the math, but I have noticed that 1 kg of meat will cook faster in the pot than on the bare burner and the game tells me that it won't burn as fast as well.

Thanks. I wish it was more consistent though. I've since found that the cat tails can appear turned around in the game. It may be somewhat dependent on prevailing winds or, more likely, just coincidence in however the programmer places stuff when drawing up the map. I did spot another that I think is pretty consistent within each area of the map. The rivers seem to flow the same way, which probably represents them flowing from the generally highest points of land on the island towares the seashores. I've haven't yet explored all the map zones, so I could still get shot down on this theory. IRL in Canada at least, it holds some truth. Rivers west of the Great Divide (which forms part of the boundary between BC and Alberta) flow generally (that is, bends in the river aside) west towards the Pacific and rivers east of the Great Divide flow east towards the Atlantic. Rivers north of the North/South Great Dvide (which is a marked location in Northern Ontario) flow north towards the Arctic Ocean.