ToAsT

3 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Hey all,

I don't usually post in here, but I'm not fond of some of the tone of the discussion and comments (including ones that are being reported). Let's keep it friendly.

In all this situation around "Signal Void" and Interloper (which we've already explained and I won't spend more time on that b/c I don't think it's our job to justify our dev decisions to folks), it's been quite disappointing to see how heated, and how "coded" the language has been at times.

From our perspective, people who choose to play the game using Interloper experience mode settings are just one of our many sub-groups of players. It might surprise you that there are many more that prefer to pay primarily Pilgrim (you just don't often hear from them, because they don't define themselves as "Pilgrims" or whatever). Or the other modes. I don't think it matters. Each of these modes is valid. The reason we included the Experience Modes was to give players some choices, from save to save, in how they might like to bias their experience along a spectrum (from exploration on one end, to survival on the other). There's no one right way to play, no Experience that is somehow superior to another. There's only how YOU choose to play, what is valuable to YOU, and what brings YOU enjoyment. They are all part of THE LONG DARK. You aren't somehow "better" or "more important" or "more valuable to Hinterland" because you play Interloper. 

The disappointing part -- for me -- isn't so much the anger and jibes that were pointed at us when we first launched Part Two of TALES -- sadly, we've become used to that. It was to hear stories from people who *don't* primarily play using Interloper settings, saying how they are being berated by "Interloper players" in the community, or while streaming, being told that if they don't play using Interloper they aren't really playing the game, they aren't good at it, they should try this or that strategy or they aren't doing it right, etc. etc. This is super disappointing to me personally, as it's 100% not what I wanted or foresaw for this Experience Mode. If I'd known it would create this occasionally toxic set of behaviours in our mostly generous and accepting community, I would never have added it to the game. That's never been what THE LONG DARK is about.

I also think it's easy to forget that we've always made THE LONG DARK with a player community, and we've always kept our ears open to player feedback, because this game is a living, breathing thing, and so is the community -- it's not the same as it was when we first launched, and it won't be the same when we eventually close the door on the game. That's part of our job as developers -- to help guide the game along its life-cycle. It's easy to look at a change like bringing Signal Void to Interloper and behave like it's some victory of the players *over* the developers, or whatever. To me, that's super counter-productive. We don't "cave" to pressure and we've never made the game that way. Personally, I don't care how many of you yell at me at Twitter, if I don't agree with a thing, I'm not going to change it. But as stubborn as I may be, I also know that we can't see everything, no matter how careful, not matter how thoughtful we are in our approach. And sometimes with new info, we realize we want to change a decision we had made. So we change it. That's a healthy thing for a game, pretty sure? Setting up a dynamic of "we triumphed against the developer!" (those exact words weren't written here, I'm just talking about a general sentiment that often exists in our industry, and in player communities across all games) is really damaging, in my opinion. 

I hope we can be a little more self-aware in our interactions with each other, make space for players of all kinds with all kinds of tastes and looking for various different kinds of experiences in THE LONG DARK. That's what makes the game special. That's what makes this community special. Let's not lose sight of that, ok?

- Raph

 

I acknowledge that plans can change over time and that certain players will always find fault in whatever decision Hinterland chooses to make with the game. That's unavoidable.

It seems to me like some of the anger / disappointment from Interloper players was that they weren't informed when the DLC was released that they wouldn't be able to play or interact with the various tales on that difficulty, or find the item variants, with their existing saves.

6 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

That's rather unfair... I can think of several things that have been changed when complaints were made.  Rifles and revolvers were made toggle-able in Custom after some players complained that they couldn't use a rifle without getting "stalker" loot.  The birch tea toggle was added when Lopers complained that it was too OP.  Originally, after that change was made, ammo wouldn't spawn on Interloper, so it was fixed.  The behavior of T-Wolves has been changed a few times in response to player complaints about it.  Sprain healing mechanics were changed from the way they were when they were first introduced.  Even the mechanics have been adjusted a few times since I first started playing. 

HL have changed things... usually, but not always, by adding toggles in Custom... still, they are changes.  As devs go, HL is a cut above most in responding to player concerns.

This was also a very swift change compared to previous issues which were in the game for a long time. I recall a time when it was extremely easy to accidentally eat raw meat, but HL pushed back for a long time until eventually modifying the in-game behavior.

20 hours ago, Admin said:

No, but we can likely make an adjustment to your game via our Support Team to assist you with this. (And we're happy to help!) 

Thank you. Should I open a ticket on your support portal, or is there another way to do this?

11 hours ago, I_eat_only_wolf_meat said:

My sense is that it's the latter.  We've been over this in the other release announcement for pages and pages and pages.  Much more bitter than any topic I can remember related to this game.  I'm pretty much resigned to starting a stalker run to play it.  It's not all bad, the guns in stalker are fun to play with and I'll see the new loot from the first TFTFT release.

I'm not so sure, since this is a paid add-on and the feedback on this particular feature (albeit from a small and very vocal set of interloper players) has been largely negative. If you pay extra for something up front and the developer tells you that you're only getting some of what was promised then I'd be pretty pissed, too. There was no mention at all about Interloper players not being able to play the Tales when the DLC was announced or before this set was released.

But you're probably right in that it's best not to dwell on it assumingit never ends up eventually happening.

I'm not an interloper player (I haven't even done 1 day on that difficulty) but I often watch streamers who only play that mode so it would've been nice to watch them experience the Tales. Not being able to play through the Tales on that difficulty probably should've been something that was explained up-front in the original roadmap and description of the DLC. It feels like Hinterland originally intended on enabling it for loper but later realized that they didn't have enough time to make it fit. I hope they find a way to make it work, maybe later in the dev cycle.

Throughout the TLD development lifecycle, Hinterland has changed some of the sounds in the game, as well as updated the main menu background and sounds. I like most of the newer updates, but I'd also like the option of showing the older menu screen and music of trapper's cabin. Are those assets still in the game? It would be nice to be given the option of selecting which main menu background and music you'd like to be shown rather than be forced into whatever the latest choice is.

Another thing that threw me off was when they changed the crow sounds to match that of Wintermute after Season 3/4. I can't say that I'm a fan of the newer crow sounds - they sound like some other bird to me. It doesn't look like I'm the only one with that opinion either:

Perhaps it's just a minor quip but having the option of restoring those crow sounds to the older version would be nice. If not, then I might have to wait for modding support...

Are the newly updated bunkers / prepper caches available in Survival mode if you created a new save during Part 1, or do we have to restart in order to find them? Same goes for the oak trees, I suppose.

35 minutes ago, Admin said:

Thank you for reaching out. 

We're sorry to hear you are experiencing this issue. No, this was not a Known Issue prior to release, however, we have listed it as a Known Issue so players are aware that we are working on it. We will provide news as soon as it is available. 

I experienced this on PC as well after the DLC update, and noted that several other people experienced the same problem. I think I posted in either these forums or those on Steam. In any case, because my old saves aren't usable after the update, I can't go back to them to quickly finish the episode and update the game state. Is there a way I can "trick" the game status into showing Episode 4 as completed?

On 12/9/2022 at 11:20 PM, Gwynren said:

There should have been a list of patch notes at launch. Period. SO many complaints across social media, forums, and Steam reviews have stemmed from the complete lack of written communication over 1) what is included in the first drop of the expansion pass; 2) what changes have been made to Survival mode. It's a real shame because usually the studio is so so excellent at communicating!

Raph said on Twitter that there were over a 1,000 small tweaks made during the restructure and therefore it was impossible to have a change list, but I disagree. Hinterland should have found a way to summarise the major changes, list the expansion contents, and hint at the smaller changes. Releasing a video on TFTF is not enough.

Tweaking or fixing stuff is fine (and most people were encouraging it), but like you said the change should've been part of the release notes or at least mentioned under a "known issues" section since it sounds like they've been aware of it for a while. Many other things that were mentioned to be part of the expansion were implied to exist in this first update, like acorns and cougars, so people were actively looking for them and were confused by their absence (I know because I was watching highly active TLD streamers from the expansion's release and they had the same questions). Clear communication and managing expectations are part of any update/software release, especially a large one like Tales from the Far Territory.

I think this goes back to Hinterland apparently not having proper external beta testing of their product, since many of these changes would've been spotted by seasoned players and ironed out before the eventual release date. There's a balance between the wonder of a new update and feeling like you're experiencing TLD for the first time again, and the sense like you're being kept in the figurative dark. The needle has swung too far in the latter direction, in my opinion, and we've seen the poor results before in previous releases such as the rapidly disappearing corpses/items that came with Episode 4 (which took 4+ months to properly resolve).

Tweaks/changes that aren't adequately tracked in software development lead me to believe that their QA dept isn't adequately testing the changes and we're likely to have more "oversights" in the future. I was hoping the separation between story-mode and survival would lead to additional quality in the final product.

I really think Hinterland should consider releasing these updates to major streamers or dedicated external QA to assist with testing at least 1-2 weeks prior to their eventual release. With streamers you can make it time-limited or a feature "spotlight" into the eventual release, build up some hype, and track down major oversights before releasing the update to the masses.

With the upcoming update and being unable to transfer / migrate saves, I've been attempting to complete some of the challenges, get badges/feats, and so on that typically take a long time (for example, surviving 500 days). Chances are that I'm not going to have the real-world hours necessary to do this before the update comes out. Hinterland has said that we can use the Time Capsule function to load a previous version of the game and continue with our saved games, etc, but what I'm wondering is... if we complete achievements, get badges from challenges, get new feats in the previous "Time Capsule" version of the game, will those accomplishments transfer back to the current version of the game post-update?

For example, on Dec 5th, I decide to use Time Capsule and I complete Escape the Darkwalker on the pre-update version of the game, Later in December, I decide to use the updated version of TLD. Will Escape the Darkwalker (and the associated feats / badges) be completed as well in the current version of the game?

On 11/24/2022 at 8:27 PM, Sherri said:

Sorry to revive this... but as we approach the TFTFT update and the predicted save game losses.... I also tried to look into exporting the Journal of my largest save. It would be really nice if - at minimum - the game would enable copy/paste (highlight journal txt, hit Ctrl+C) so I could at least copy it into a text document. This might be an easier stop-gap before a full Export feature is built.

This + expanding the size of the journal. With the number of regions and amount of notes I put in one of my longer games, it's been frustrating to continually come up against the max # of characters.

Thanks for the feedback. I suppose it might be fun to tromp around through the different regions, if only to get a fresh perspective and refresh my memory of the game world. I haven't found all of the polaroids either, so maybe that will give me some incentive to retrace my steps.

I know it's not "in-line" with the game world and the red lost & found boxes, but it'd be nice if they provided a list on the map of which items were transported to a red box or make it so that the items within, even if ruined, would not be removed from the game world. After all, you aren't able to add items in there anyway, so it's not like it would be abused as some kind of weird tactic for endless loot.

I have a saved game that I've been running through steadily for a few years now (300+ in-game days) and that's gone through several major game updates. I used this particular run to get most of the achievements, and so I've explored almost every nook and cranny, plus I've picked up pretty much all the useful loot I could find. As a result, there are red boxes everywhere - the kind that Hinterland shunts items into when they make a region change - and they're loaded with hundreds of items each.

I was wondering what would happen to those items if, given enough time, they become ruined? Do they disappear from the red boxes the same way they do for other in-game containers? I have a ton of meat and other resources that I'd rather not lose, even if they reach 0% quality. After all, many of the items placed into those boxes weren't in any containers beforehand, and that was on purpose to avoid them disappearing from the game.

On 4/10/2022 at 10:07 AM, Andy_K said:

That level of despawning is not normal. Going into an interior location doesn't instantly zap all wildlife. Sometimes it will if you rest or perform time consuming activities, especially if you're close to the day/night or weather change threshold, but bleed timers and so forth are supposed to continue when you switch regions, let alone just simply moving indoors/outdoors.

Sounds like from their original post that carcasses already existing in the region were fixed so as to not disappear, but they're still trying to sort out the player-killed ones. Kinda disappointing because that *should* be common-enough that they can troubleshoot and diagnose the issue but alas... we'll have to wait for another update it seems.

Thanks for the update, Hinterland. I'm hoping you can fully sort out the animal carcass bug soon because that's the primary reason I stopped playing for the last 4-5 months.

On 2/23/2022 at 4:06 PM, peteloud said:

Well, the update must be due any day.

That's what I thought 2 months ago. Really frustrating.

Can we please get some form of estimate for when the bug with the accelerated degradation of corpses and items in the world might be fixed? I truly enjoy the new additions to TLD that come out, and I appreciate all of the difficult work that Hinterland does, but I also don't understand why it has taken this long to acknowledge that this is a serious issue and to give us some more information. Many players have been experiencing this problem in their games for weeks now, if not since shortly after the last update came out. I've personally been holding off playing the game for over a month because of it, waiting for a patch to come out, and I was hoping for a hotfix for this particular issue.  If you need more evidence or saved games to see the problem and reproduce, please reach out to the people who have commented about it, not only on these forums but the more popular Steam forums or Reddit.

In a game with perma-death, bugs like this can really affect the player and could mean the difference between a long survival run or one cut unpredictably short. I ran into similar issues while playing Wintermute Ep 4, but fortunately I could save those games and at the time I was close to the end of the episode, so it didn't affect me that much. In survival, on the higher difficulties or in some of the challenges, it's an unexpected and unfortunate surprise when you expect to find a carcass, corpse, or an item to be where you left it or where it's guaranteed to be, and it's either not there at all or it disappears much quicker than normal.

On 12/30/2021 at 7:42 PM, SpitztheGreat said:

Is it me, or are animals much more resilient at Blackrock? Be it wolves or deer, glancing shots don't seem to kill them from blood loss. I'm currently tracking a deer that I (intentionally) put two rounds into and it hasn't gone down. I got into a fight with a regular wolf that took one revolver round, ran around, attacked him, ran around, attacked me again, ran around, and attacked me for a third time before running off and dying. I'm fine with a challenge, but this doesn't feel like a challenge, it feels like something is broken.

I don't think anyone has been given an indication that the resilience of wildlife is different. To me, it feels like Blackrock is a much more enclosed map than the others, with few wide open areas. It feels like Crumbling Highway between parts of the map, where you know the only way to get somewhere is through a single route. So, in other maps when the wildlife was scared or shot, they would run off in one direction and not really circle back until they were well out of sight and smell range, but in BR they tend to "bounce around" the same area until their frightened status wears off, leading to another close encounter sooner than expected. That's my experience, anyway.

I'm curious what other people's hopes are for episode 5, specifically locations or items in Perseverance Mills or the adjoining areas (that haven't already been mentioned). I had a bunch of ideas for buildings that might be nice to see in the upcoming episode, with the hope that at least a few make it in:

• Tannery: A workshop with a special set of tools that you can use to convert animal hides into cured leather. This would be helpful for late-game players to be able to maintain their man-made gear through hunting. Also a blueprint / method of crafting timberwolf hides into something unique (see below).
• Lumber mill: Based on the region name, it sounds like something the location should have.
• Cable car lift: Only active during an aurora, it transports you to an elevated area that would otherwise be inaccessible.
• Tavern/Inn: Milton and other locations seemed void of any place for visitors to stay without being part of the maintenance of the island facilities (radio tower, dam, etc) or already being a member of a club/organisation/group (Hunting Lodge in BR or Community Hall in PV). 
• Seaplane Hangar / Airstrip: Simply based on the fact that Mackenzie was flying in, they should probably have something like this.
• Lab: Scientific or other equipment that wasn't affected by the aurora. Let your imagination run wild.
• Sheriff / ranger / mountie office: If the region is fairly large and more populated than Milton then a small lockup area or police detachment might be prudent. An old barracks when Great Bear was used for military training converted into a jail, perhaps?
• Forest Talkers hideout: With all the notes and other evidence of this group on Great Bear in previous episodes, it seems likely we'll encounter something significant with respect to them in Ep 5.
• Hot Springs: Perhaps Great Bear has some geothermal activity as well? Could be a location to gather salt brine (to be made into Salt Preserves - see below).

New items

I tried to include items that provide benefits which don't already exist in some other form within the game, and some possible balancing mechanics. I'd be happy to see more items that emphasize avoiding predators than engaging them, which I feel is more in-line with TLD's original atmosphere:

• Timberwolf hide cloak: An outer layer that provides good wind resistance and also reduces your predator detection radius. Reduces your sprint meter or increases your sprain risk.
• Timberwolf cowl: An outer head covering that effectively acts like a hood. Increases the chance of scaring wolves and/or reduces the morale of an attacking timberwolf pack. Not as warm as other headgear.
• Salt Preserves: Item that doesn't degrade and has multiple uses. Can be applied to meat to greatly reduce its condition loss. Reduces scent from meat its applied to. Meat must be combined with fresh water to become edible again.
• Birch bark container: Can be crafted from several pieces of birch bark. Similar to salt preserves in terms of preserving food from spoilage. Used by the natives. Limited uses.
• Chaga: Natural fungus found on trees. Brewed into a coffee-like blend to reduce fatigue loss.
• Snowberry soap: Small berries found on bushes even in winter. Prepared into a soap-like substance by boiling with water. When applied, reduces the radius that your scent can be detected by predators for several hours.
• Beetle Larvae: Extracted from fallen logs, stumps, or dead trees. Identified by the many holes drilled into the wood by woodpeckers. When extracted (via knife / hatchet / saw) and combined with a fishing hook, each significantly decreases the time required to catch your first fish and increases the weight of said fish. Some caloric value but likely to carry parasites.
• Siphon: Craftable. Rubber hose + jerry can. Used to siphon fuel from vehicles.
• Snow goggles: Increases visibility in blizzard-like conditions for the wearer.
• Deck of cards: Slows the buildup of cabin fever when carried or passing time (there is, after all, a card flapping noise when passing time).

New mechanics:

• Siphoning fuel from vehicles (accelerant, lamp fuel, torches, or some other purpose). Otherwise, why give the option to open the gas tank cover?
• Adding tinder to a fire as fuel (helpful for those beyond Fire Starting 3)
• Something else with spray paint? Maybe apply it to your shoes to retain your footprints in the snow for a period of time? Might be helpful to retrace your steps / find your way in a blizzard.
• Introduce items in vehicle sunvisors (not just the ones in storymode, either). Keys, notes, polaroids, small snacks, matches, etc.
• Randomized objectives: Not in the sense that anything goes, but it'd be nice if locations of job/quest objectives were at least slightly randomized to increase replayability.

Of course, this is just a collection of ideas, several of which may have already been discussed in the forums. Maybe some of them are too ambitious for a final episode and would be more suited for a separate DLC (free or otherwise). Either way, I'm looking forward to what awaits us in Episode 5 and beyond.

What are your ideas for new items, mechanics or locations to be included in Episode 5?

In order from favourite to least favourite:

Episode 1: Post-redux. New story, cleaner approach, and it's always fun to start with nothing and build yourself up. Felt like the base survival game in many respects, but more forgiving and with a little more direction. New Milton location quickly became one of my favourites. An air of mystery surrounded the episode, which I loved.
Episode 2: Getting the spear and travelling across multiple zones reminded me of when I first played survival. You put your skills of surviving the wilderness and the weather to the test. Integration of the aurora into actual gameplay. The legends side-quest was a fun distraction that took me to parts of the regions I wouldn't have normally explored.
Episode 4: I enjoyed the intro and the general storyline surrounding the episode, but it was too much of a straight line. I like the new region, but the amount of wolves was a turn-off, as was the annoyance of frequently dumping my gear. Could've used some more polish, as there were instances where I said to myself "why couldn't McKenzie have just ___?". The noisemaker was sorely needed, IMO. Region felt a little cramped overall - maybe it was the number of wolves?
Episode 3: Timberwolves - can see you from super far away, blue flare doesn't do much, and they're out during blizzards. Too railroad-y. Forced encounters. This woman who saved me somehow always knows where I am and only rings that telephone nearby? She keeps a dead body in her basement? The crashed airline passengers are dying and she can't be bothered to help out even though she apparently knows the area extremely well? What? I did enjoy how they filled in parts of Pleasant Valley with more locations.

Things I enjoyed overall:
- Ability to save: this was really nice to have, if only to allow me to go at my own pace and try new things rather than asking on forums or watching streams, or saving my game file via script.
- Characters: Overall, I really liked the characters, the voice acting, and so on. Very well put together. There were some cheesy moments, but it kept my attention for the most part.
- Side-quests: Some of them were fetch quests, but I liked how they integrated them into the region and storyline to make them seem natural and relevant.
- New regions: Without storymode, we probably wouldn't have all these new regions, or discover any sort of connection between them.
- New flavour: Each episode had its own flavour to it, and I would always look forward to it from the initial announcement to the release date.

Things I didn't like overall:
- Lack of randomness: Part of the intrigue and replayability of the Long Dark (to me anyway) is that you don't know exactly where things are in the world even if you know the general layout of the land. They could've done this more for the storymode; item X could be in one of several places (loot tables), or the puzzles could be randomized to have a different layout each time.
- The dialog flow: Often the characters would say something and there wasn't an option for me to dig for more information even if it was necessary IMO to fill in some of the gaps. Motives were rarely explored and characters rarely provided actual meaningful advice to your character about the environment they were about to be thrust in. Too many unanswered questions. Interactions felt hollow and without decision trees.
- Lack of skills: Set the character's base skill depending on the difficulty and then you can appreciate your character learning as they go along. As it currently is, there's no feeling of progression other than to advance the story.
- No divergent paths: The main storyline was very railroad-y. There are ways of providing different paths that make some choices matter. Provide a default option if someone starts an Episode without completing the previous ones.
- Poor tutorial via in-game mechanics: The characters didn't explain certain things that would be useful or things that differed from the survival mode. "Watch yourself in the blizzards; the timberwolves aren't afraid of bad weather" or "Flame will keep the wolves at bay for a short while; but you'll need to be threatening to get them to back off". I still felt largely on my own and at the mercy of the game mechanics (which changed several times during the course of Wintermute!), especially when it came to things like deterring wolves or using some of the weapons.

Quote

22 hours ago, Admin said:

...

To try to make it up to you, we’re going to prepare Darkwalker as a new standalone Challenge in the game, to be released along with the rest of our December update content, which includes a new region and a variety of other things. This way, anyone who missed the event, on any of our platforms and for any reason will still get the chance to play ESCAPE THE DARKWALKER, and unlock all the same content that was available during the live event.

...

Does this also mean that people can get the badges & the feat later if they don't obtain them before Nov 12th?

I just completed Archivist a few minutes ago. I went through all the locations except for the final two listed for Broken Railroad, which I decided to complete last. When the aurora started, I went out from the shed to the maintenance yard exterior and clicked on the PC in the little enclosed outdoor area with the bed and - to my surprise - it gave me the challenge completion! Is this a bug? Is there supposed to be another PC inside the maintenance shed as listed in the challenge requirements?

In any case, I'm annoyed because now my save game is gone and I was planning to use my remaining GO drinks, stims, and coffees to progress with the Straight to the Heart feat.

On 9/18/2020 at 11:40 PM, darkscaryforest said:

Yeah, this isn't too bad though. The technique I use is: light fire, look around to make sure no aggroed wolves, equip weapon to have it ready, harvest what you want, drop it on the ground to lose scent, repeat. I don't think you'll get jumped mid-harvest if you weren't aggroed before you start. You might come out of harvest to discover your visitor growling by the fire, but just quickly aim your weapon to disperse them..you should have lots of time. If you wanted to harvest it all at once, I *think* scent still won't apply until your done so risk wouldn't increase here. Also, animals don't move very far when you're passing time like this (unless injured and running off), they kind of just dance around

 

Speaking about the fire (less sure of torch), no. Say you have a fire waiting somewhere and you go aggro a wolf. You run back to the fire and the wolf is still far off. Aim your weapon and the wolf will actually charge, but stop short of where it normally would. If you're still aiming when it gets there, it'll turn and run off..otherwise it'll growl and wait. This is a great, safe way to kill a wolf btw. When the wolf turns to run, you have a split second window to pop him without fear of retaliation. I find it is best to do it after it has come to a complete stop and growled.

 

I believe so, but double check me. If you want to squash the detection range after it flees to prevent reaggro, immediately crouch (helps if you have no scent).

 

I'm almost certain fires don't scare aurora wolves (and probably not flares or torches either) since one got WAY too close to my fire and I had to panic shoot it. The wiki states that a flashlight's high beam will scare wolves (ergo, aurora wolves since it only works during an aurora) by itself but I've never tried it.

 

Yes absolutely. If you score a direct hit on a wolf with a stone WITHOUT AIMING/NEVER AIM and without a fire or torch, you have a *decent chance* of scaring them off.  This has saved me many times.

 

From my observations, everything we've talked about applies to both difficulties. All my playtime has been past the fearless navigator update.

Thank you! This certainly helps. I watched another video since I posted this: they had a lit flare and a wolf growling at them. They threw the flare a couple of times and the second time seemed to scare the wolf off. In my previous experience from earlier versions of the game, the wolves would always charge me when I tossed a flare at them. Do you think this behavior has changed?

I agree that the late-game gameplay is a little lacking. I suspect the expectation is that once you've become "satisfied" with your current sandbox game, that you should start over and try again, adjusting the gameplay as you see fit (difficulty, custom options, etc). Adding additional resources, major gameplay options, etc could potentially upset the game as it is, so I highly doubt that they'd introduce any extreme measures. With that said, there are some things I think Hinterland could introduce for late-game players that wouldn't be overly taxing (given what's already in the game) and might help:

- Major Weather Events. Similar to the Whiteout challenge or the events in Episode 3, you could have major weather events that occur sporadically past Day 50 or so that you could potentially predict in advance (craft a makeshift barometer?) and prepare for. E.g., A massive 2 day blizzard is coming that will drop the temperature to Winter's Embrace levels indoors and that you have to prep for.

- Small quests triggered by finding notes in the world. Similar to the storymode, maybe you can find the fabled white deer, or solve an age-old mystery by reading emails on certain PCs scattered about the world during an aurora (like the Archivist challenge). They'd have to be difficult enough that your survivor would need to be well-outfitted and have several regions prepped with supplies before undergoing the quests. Heck, even have a random "end-game" if the player chooses that's like Hopeless Rescue, but the beginning and end are randomized (Timberwolf Mountain to Desolation Point is the original, but it could be Broken Railroad to Bleak Inlet, or something else).

- Advanced crafting recipes. Maybe some of the items you can craft aren't known to you until you find the recipe somewhere in the world?

- Improvised Firearm for late-game Interloper players to actually bother with Bleak Inlet. Could tie in with the "find a blueprint" of the previous point. Could simply be a matter of finding a ruined rifle/revolver and only allowing it to be fixed at the cannery.

- More unique spawns in other regions. Mystery Lake and Pleasant Valley both had random prepper caches. I'd like to see something similar in the other regions, if only for the exploration thrill. And maybe, in these particular spots, food doesn't decay as quickly, so in late games on Stalker or Interloper, there's still a reason to go there.

- Do something with the mine in Coastal Highway

On 9/8/2020 at 1:59 AM, Patriot said:

How easy do you believe it to be to master a skill? You become a master chef, a master butcher, a master archer, gunman, etc... all in relatively short order. The fella is a veritable genius. So mastering the art of mending in only 100-200 days is not unreasonable.

The problem is that improving your mending skill is vastly out of proportion to the other skills in the game, and it requires finite resources to accomplish. I wouldn't consider warming up some tea or coffee in hot water to reasonably improve my cooking skill, but it does. Fire starting, harvesting, gunsmithing, and most of the other skills can be mastered with focused practice within a few weeks of game time, if that. Why should mending clothing be any different?

What's unreasonable is that they don't include crafting clothing from animal hides and guts to be a similar enough task to improve your mending skill.