Jimmy

For now, yes. You gain cooking XP based on the number of cooked foods you remove from a fire. It doesn't matter if the thing you cook is 1kg of bear meat or 0.01kg of rabbit meat. So, if you're patient enough to spend the effort when harvesting a carcass, you can cancel harvesting as soon as you start to get a small sliver of meat. Repeat continuously until you get a backpack full of tiny bits of meat, then cook them for a minute each and power-level your cooking skill. Is this an exploit or working as intended? That's up to you to decide. It's a single-player game, so do whatever you want.

I swear the wind algorithm is borderline sentient. And also, about as friendly as SkyNet. I just lost my latest Interloper on Muskeg Overlook. I caught some rabbits, cooked them in the hollow tree, and settled in with my bedroll. Cue a blizzard blowing at exactly the right direction to extinguish my fire and freeze my sorry corpse. To whoever in the Hinterland team designed that feature, bravo.

Step 1: Take torch from fire Step 2: Harvest torch to gain a stick Step 3: Repeat step 1 and 2 until fire is under 10 minutes duration

Timberwolf Mountain is mercifully free of scrub barriers. Only Hushed River Valley contains those, which is why I go there after forging an improvised hatchet. As for my route, here's my typical strategy to hit the Summit as early as possible: if I plan an early Summit to Timberwolf Mountain, there's a fairly linear route to guarantee enough calories that I shouldn't require food, merely a bedroll or enough cloth for two snow shelters plus a hacksaw. Coming fully rested from Pleasant Valley, I usually grab a half dozen birch barks and two rabbits before hitting the Mountaineer's Hut. Dropping the rabbits at the hut and warming up while I harvest them, I set them to cook for the half hour or so while I bag the two other rabbits down on Crystal Lake. The four should fill my calorie meter, and give me enough time to brew a cup of hot birch bark tea for a warmth boost. Full and warmed up with a half dozen torches pulled from the fire, I then wander down to the Wing, grab the canned food, tea and coffee, then run down Echo Ravine carrying my fire to ward off the wolf at the Engine and start up a small campfire to scare him off, looting the sweaters, socks and shoes. I slip up to the cave above the engine, set a fire and brew a litre of water in some cans while I warm up a second birch bark tea on the ground. While this boils, I grab the four or five coal from the cave, and check there's no wool ear wraps near the corpse in here, which is a possible spawn. By the time I'm done looting the cave, the water should be just finished boiling, so I harvest any burnt out torches, feeding them back in the fire if I need more duration to pull back to a half dozen torches, then drink my birch bark tea and climb up to the three-way Cave. I'll use the duration of my warmth to stock up on sticks and bag the three rabbits nearby, then boil another litre of water while I harvest their carcasses for meat, cook them for dinner before I sleep here, and spend the litre of water I made by brewing three coffee and one tea for when I need extra condition recovery while I sleep, remembering to drop one coffee before I rest and feeding the fire up to eight hours duration for a ten hour rest. In the morning I pick up the coffee, eat whatever leftover rabbit I have, then take a sip of water, pull a torch and make for the Deer Clearing. If the deer carcass is near the base of the rope, I'll start a small fire here, warm up and harvest the venison while I brew water, and heat my coffee again, then drink my coffee, eat the cooked venison to max out my calories, then drop any leftovers and ascend the rope to the deer clearing. If there's no deer carcass I simply drink my hot coffee at the base of the rope to maximize the warmth duration, since I'll be without a torch after ascending. I usually grab the coal in the cave and whatever other loot is there, then loot the cargo container for tomato soup, cloth and scrap metal before hiking to the rope climb up to the Secluded Shelf, drinking a second coffee before the climb. I typically don't bother with a torch here, paying the price in warmth and condition to save a match like the cheapskate I am. Once inside the Secluded Shelf, there's coal galore to loot here, plus a possible magnifying lens on one loot table. With a dozen or more coal in my pack, I head out of the cave, grab the rabbit outside and hope for a deer carcass before the summit climb to fill my calorie meter once more. If I've been efficient, I should have just enough energy to make the third climb to the summit without resting by drinking a third coffee, though I may need to drop all my lovely coal and assorted firewood beforehand. After that, it's just a case of gathering sticks on the summit for a fire inside the Tail Section, resting, looting the place down to the rivets, and then spraining every part of my body returning to the Mountaineer's Hut the fast way. Calories at this point should be sufficient to see me down the mountain even without touching the looted foods from the journey, though returning to Pleasant Valley might cost a few cattails harvested from Crystal Lake without a rabbit hunting detour. If I feel particularly scroogish, I'll save the cattails and head directly for the rabbits at Misty Falls Picnic Area to fill my calories again, though I might also require a second hunt at the rabbit grove near the hunter's blind if I didn't already clear this spot on my trip up.

Interesting list! Why do you not consider a hacksaw to be an every day carry item? Do you skip grabbing saplings and harvesting tree limbs? I'm curious why you don't carry two cans in your optional list. For the extra weight of a single stick, I consider two cans an efficient means of creating water as I travel when I'm harvesting a carcass. I also find the prybar surprising, since I usually drop this unless I know I'm going to hit a location where I'll need it, such as Orca Gas Station or Carter Hydro Dam. I also like two coal as a buffer, since +40°C is enough to handle even the coldest of Interloper blizzards so long as you find a sheltered location such as a cave. My personal "bare essentials" list: 1 box of matches OR firestriker (0.10kg) 1 magnifying glass (0.10kg) 2 coal (0.60kg) 2 recycled cans (0.30kg) 1 (improvised) knife (0.50kg-0.75kg) 1 hacksaw (1.00kg) 1 survival bow (0.50kg) 3 simple arrows (0.45kg) 3 arrow shafts (0.15kg) 1 torch (0.30kg) 10 cattail stalks (0.50kg) 2L water (2.00kg) Total: 6.50kg or 6.75kg with improvised knife, plus clothing, first aid and miscellaneous supplies such as tinder.

The image below is a great visual aid to understanding the risk of each food when eating low condition items.

I guess you don't subscribe to the school of thought that a wolf carcass is just a pile of 0.01kg meat chips away from Cooking 5?

Mountain Town is... well, it's worth looting if you plan to head to Hushed River Valley. The Orca Gas Station has decent loot, and you can get lucky with RNG in Milton too if you need an extra thin wool sweater, wool socks or thermal underwear. Typically, my strategy on a new Interloper game is to move from my spawn to the closest pack of guaranteed matches, then find a hacksaw and make my way to Timberwolf Mountain Summit. Once I've looted this, I go to the Carter Hydro Dam and drop off a maple sapling, birch saplings, five deer hide, seven rabbit hide, and assorted gut for curing. Then I'll hit Forlorn Muskeg to forge a knife, hatchet and arrowheads, and make for Mountain Town via Trapper's once I return from forging. I can usually get this done within the first ten to twenty days of the game, provided I don't get an unlucky spawn or wolf encounter.

The good news is that there's a guaranteed spawn in Mystery Lake for a magnifying lens on Interloper. Check under the bed of the left bunk upstairs in the Camp Office, downstairs behind the shelves across from the crafting table in the Camp Office, or in the Trapper's Homestead. If it's not there, you didn't check the Forestry Lookout thoroughly enough! However, I'd suggest a trip up to the Summit of Timberwolf Mountain. This will offer a variety of benefits for your Interloper game. First, you have three boxes of matches guaranteed to spawn (Mountaineer's Hut, Three-Way Cave, Tail Section). Second, you have a guaranteed firestriker at the Tail Section too. Third, you will gain a huge amount of clothing along the route, some of which is the best in slot for Interloper. Try to stretch your three matches by pulling torches out of campfires and carrying your flame as you travel. With a combination of torch chains and a magnifying lens, you should easily be able to reach Timberwolf Mountain from Mystery Lake using your three remaining matches. Good luck!

Wow, over seven hundred days! Those custom settings are pretty tough too. Congrats!

You're welcome! Though you should thank the kindly folk that took the time to examine the game for static spawn locations and compile that information. There's always one at a static location on Timberwolf Mountain, always one in Broken Railroad at one of four locations, and the last one is either in one of two locations in Mystery Lake, in Coastal Highway, or in Desolation Point.

My tips by inventory category: Fire Supplies - Each time before you rest, drop everything except a single firestriker or pack of matches and magnifying lens. If you're not yet at Fire Starting 3, drop all but four tinder or cattail stalks. Aim to carry two pieces of coal for emergencies such as an untimely blizzard. This keeps the tab at 1kg weight each morning. Collect at least 10 sticks each day as you go out, adding an extra 1.5kg or so. This habit will ensure you have small caches of matches and fuel saved across the maps, as well as keeping your daily weight down. First Aid - I tend to avoid carrying anything daily, though if you're not confident in your ability to avoid wolf attacks, consider carrying up to four bandages. Anything else in this tab should be dropped at a nearby base, since only bleeding is a critical condition to treat in the field. Drop any teas you've made before resting, there's plenty more resources for making more later. Clothing - Wear the best, drop the rest. Food - Drop everything except a single day's emergency rations before resting. Aim to carry ten cattail stalks or two boxes of salty crackers as an emergency food supply, but try to utilize local resources such as rabbits where possible instead of your non-renewable resources. Don't carry ten tins of pinnacle peaches across the map unless you're actively spending the day moving your resources to a new base. Water should never be more than 2L at any time, which is enough to fully fill your hydration three times over. Drop extra water wherever you happen to boil it after drinking. Never carry cooked meat, and only carry raw meat as far as you need to the nearest safe location to cook it. When harvesting carcasses, take one piece at a time and drop it rather than harvesting an entire carcass in one action. Tools - Two recycled cans, one (improvised) knife, one hacksaw, one survival bow, three simple arrows, three arrow shafts, and at least one torch, preferably three to five. Use your knife for harvesting meat to maximize time saved. Keep your hacksaw at hand to cut saplings and harvest tree limbs for long lasting fires. With three simple arrows, you should have twelve or more shots before you need to repair them, enough to keep you fed an extremely long time. Try not to lose your arrows if at all possible. Get in the habit of boiling water whenever you have time, such as harvesting a carcass. Carry fire using your torches to save matches, increase your body temperature, and ward off wolf attacks. Drop all the rest at your nearest base unless you're planning a specific activity such as forging. Crafting - Empty this section before sleeping.

For Interloper, the Ravine/Carter Hydro Dam is the best choice in my opinion until you're so desperate for resources you need to start beachcombing. And considering the amount of resources in the Dam, that's likely to be never. Assuming you've done the maps and looted anything not nailed down, retiring to the Ravine with about thirty rabbit snares should generate far more calories than you'll ever need. Each day, you go out and check your snares, gather wood, return to your cave and harvest rabbits. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. Once enough snares are broken, craft new ones over at Carter Hydro Dam.

I wonder if quartering might be a useful work-around? I don't generally have too much trouble losing arrows since I typically go for one-shot kills, but I might try seeing what happens if I quarter my next hunt instead of recovering the arrow.

The Milton Basin/Marsh Ridge duo are a great holiday location, but they lack convenient access to a crafting bench for making fresh arrows or new rabbit snares. Eventually you'll face a long walk to make new equipment. Most agree endgame that it's a coin-toss between the Ravine/Carter Hydro Dam for safe living, or Fishing Camp/Jackrabbit Island for beachcombing.

I know, it's a great little find if you've just hit HRV for the mackinaw and come back to find a second one a short hop away. All I'd planned on getting that trip was a fistful of cattails and a bunny breakfast below the bridge, so my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw that jacket. Good advice all over, though personally I prefer to maintain Well Fed for the bonus carry weight. That's ten sticks, five coal, a survival bow and ten arrows of free stuff! With food so plentiful if you know where to look, I can't justify not spending a bit of extra effort. When I start a game, I don't typically harvest rabbits for anything but their meat while I travel. I'll usually use my hacksaw or improvised knife, since I want to maximize the calorie value of my catch, and wasting extra calories doing it by hand isn't something I can easily justify. The exception is seven rabbit pelts that I put aside at Carter Hydro Dam for crafting mitts and a hat. Similarly, the five deer hides are easily gained from the surroundings of Carter Hydro Dam as jeffpeng has mentioned, typically with three in Winding River and two in the Ravine. I don't bother with more than one pair of deerskin pants, since combat pants are a guaranteed spawn and completely superior inner option with about a third of the weight. Strangely enough, I have remarkably regular luck getting the spawn point above the bear cave near Spence's on my new Interloper games. Which, if I'm not quick, can mean a fast finish of the run courtesy of Mr Bear.

You guessed it, it's time to go! I'd take my clothes, knife and hacksaw, plus two tin cans and firestriker, along with a bow and three arrows, plus an optional three shafts for crafting. Desolation Point is a rough spot for long term Interloper play, since the only real place for staving off cabin fever is Stone Church, and it's mighty cold past day 50. The entire map is more of a 'one and done' location to sweep for loot. Since the temperature steadily drops from day 10 to day 50, you're facing the worst situation possible trying to cross the maps, but there's still hope! Make sure you always carry a torch, chaining them to save your matches and carry your fire with you, plus enjoy that temperature boost too. Grab the coal from the transition mine as you warm up moving through, slip down to the upper cave and drop a campfire in the windbreak of the cave near the deer carcass in Crumbling Highway. Drop a coal in the campfire and ten sticks, bop the bunnies, carve the carcasses, and enjoy some barbecue. And if Mr Wolf comes sniffing around, pull out your bow and invite him for dinner! With a full belly and warm fingers, you can pull torches and head for Quonset, especially if you also brew a tea here from the nearby reishi patches. Basically, you can just nomad travel across the map, stopping at any rabbit patches or deer carcasses to warm up with ten sticks and a coal to get you toasty again while you cook what you've caught. With the survival bow, wolves are just meals on legs for you. Don't worry too much about using up your firestriker. There's always three per game, and it's useless weight if you're not prepared to spend it for fire. Instead, consider it this way: am I willing to trade 10% of my firestriker's condition in exchange for a magnifying lens? That should probably be all it will take you if you're starting one fire per day and carrying the fire by torch across the map. Beyond moving out of Desolation Point, set a goal. Is getting a magnifying lens your current priority? Head for Mystery Lake. One will always spawn somewhere on this map. Do you need better clothing? Go for the Summit on Timberwolf Mountain if you've not already visited this game, or loop through Coastal Highway and Pleasant Valley to check the houses on each, then hike up to Mountain Town and loot Milton as well. Interloper is all about constant, steady movement and planning. With a bow in hand, food is abundant. Don't stress over leaving your stockpile. Just make sure you carry plenty of coal for your campfires!

I 100% support this idea. Teaching gun safety in the game is an excellent addition, isn't overly damaging to normal gameplay, and might just save someone in real life from a nasty accident.

Let's examine this idea. Say you want to harvest a deer hide. The action to harvest the hide takes 40 minutes of in-game time by hand. Your friend, also on the same map, is currently being pursued by a wolf. So you, stuck in the harvest screen, must wait over 3 minutes of real time, watching a status bar slowly fill, while your friend plays dodge-the-wolf. How about instead, you want to sleep for 12 in-game hours after doing some mountaineering, but your friend is fully rested? Care to watch a black screen for a full hour in real-time? Want to craft something at a workbench? Better hope your friend isn't planning to go exploring. Want to go fishing? Let's hope your friend isn't chasing rabbits. Multiplayer is simply not feasible with the current game design. The core mechanic of time dilation prevents any reasonable attempt at multiple players existing in the one game.

Confirmed myself as real (v. 1.69), I spawned in Timberwolf Mountain and found these on day one. No screenshot sadly, but if you trust my word, you can simply assume I won the lottery on the RNG that day. I've not seen them regularly, however. It was generated on the ground, not from looting the corpse. Also, for what it's worth I've found a mackinaw jacket in the cars on the Spruce Falls Bridge in Mountain Town, in the front seat, not inside a boot or other container, so it's worth risking the wolf and bear here for a quick check of this location each game if you're looking for one.

During aurora in Last Resort Cannery: Recycled can + scrap metal + 0.5kg meat/fish item = 0.5kg canned food item Would this not be viable due to variables in input resource weight, condition, or variety, perhaps? After all, there's five meats and four fish to consider as inputs, and it might be difficult to accommodate partial portions of each meat. Still, the option seems to suggest itself, based on the available resources and equipment. Spam in a can, perhaps?

Cheers for the reply! I agree about prioritizing a bow if you plan to avoid consuming manufactured foods. Of course, with sufficient knowledge of the maps it's easy enough to perform the initial looting loops at the start of a game to hit up the local food spawns. For example, if I plan an early Summit to Timberwolf Mountain, there's a fairly linear route to guarantee enough calories that I shouldn't require food, merely a bedroll or enough cloth for two snow shelters plus a hacksaw. Coming fully rested from Pleasant Valley, I usually grab a half dozen birch barks and two rabbits before hitting the Mountaineer's Hut. Dropping the rabbits at the hut and warming up while I harvest them, I set them to cook for the half hour or so while I bag the two other rabbits down on Crystal Lake. The four should fill my calorie meter, and give me enough time to brew a cup of hot birch bark tea for a warmth boost. Full and warmed up with a half dozen torches pulled from the fire, I then wander down to the Wing, grab the canned food, tea and coffee, then run down Echo Ravine carrying my fire to ward off the wolf at the Engine and start up a small campfire to scare him off, looting the sweaters, socks and shoes. I slip up to the cave above the engine, set a fire and brew a litre of water in some cans while I warm up a second birch bark tea on the ground. While this boils, I grab the four or five coal from the cave, and check there's no wool ear wraps near the corpse in here, which is a possible spawn. By the time I'm done looting the cave, the water should be just finished boiling, so I harvest any burnt out torches, feeding them back in the fire if I need more duration to pull back to a half dozen torches, then drink my birch bark tea and climb up to the three-way Cave. I'll use the duration of my warmth to stock up on sticks and bag the three rabbits nearby, then boil another litre of water while I harvest their carcasses for meat, cook them for dinner before I sleep here, and spend the litre of water I made by brewing three coffee and one tea for when I need extra condition recovery while I sleep, remembering to drop one coffee before I rest and feeding the fire up to eight hours duration for a ten hour rest. In the morning I pick up the coffee, eat whatever leftover rabbit I have, then take a sip of water, pull a torch and make for the Deer Clearing. If the deer carcass is near the base of the rope, I'll start a small fire here, warm up and harvest the venison while I brew water, and heat my coffee again, then drink my coffee, eat the cooked venison to max out my calories, then drop any leftovers and ascend the rope to the deer clearing. If there's no deer carcass I simply drink my hot coffee at the base of the rope to maximize the warmth duration, since I'll be without a torch after ascending. I usually grab the coal in the cave and whatever other loot is there, then loot the cargo container for tomato soup, cloth and scrap metal before hiking to the rope climb up to the Secluded Shelf, drinking a second coffee before the climb. I typically don't bother with a torch here, paying the price in warmth and condition to save a match like the cheapskate I am. Once inside the Secluded Shelf, there's coal galore to loot here, plus a possible magnifying lens on one loot table. With a dozen or more coal in my pack, I head out of the cave, grab the rabbit outside and hope for a deer carcass before the summit climb to fill my calorie meter once more. If I've been efficient, I should have just enough energy to make the third climb to the summit without resting by drinking a third coffee, though I may need to drop all my lovely coal and assorted firewood beforehand. After that, it's just a case of gathering sticks on the summit for a fire inside the Tail Section, resting, looting the place down to the rivets, and then spraining every part of my body returning to the Mountaineer's Hut the fast way. Calories at this point should be sufficient to see me down the mountain even without touching the looted foods from the journey, though returning to Pleasant Valley might cost a few cattails harvested from Crystal Lake without a rabbit hunting detour. If I feel particularly scroogish, I'll save the cattails and head directly for the rabbits at Misty Falls Picnic Area to fill my calories again, though I might also require a second hunt at the rabbit grove near the hunter's blind if I didn't already clear this spot on my trip up.

This is interesting news! Has anyone confirmed the moose is a static spawn in Bleak Inlet? If so, that'd be a pretty good reason for Interlopers to risk the region.

I'd say that introducing stone arrowheads becomes a slippery slope of feature creep. Are stone arrowheads in the game? Well, aren't stone arrowheads usually made of flint? So the game has flint now? Why can't you combine flint and scrap metal to make a firestarter? I personally feel the balance on crafting a bow and arrows is balanced enough as it stands. Yes, it requires an investment into finding a hammer and schlepping it out to a forge, but it's a good option to kill time while you're waiting for your saplings to cure anyhow. Plus, you'll need to craft a knife for sapling carving anyway, if you're an Interloper. It's hardly much effort to bang out a few arrowheads afterwards. If you're not on Interloper, there's dozens of broken arrows near deer carcasses across the maps that you can harvest for arrowheads, not to mention the static arrow spawns in Pleasant Valley or Desolation Point, meaning you never need to forge in the first place.

I think the game itself is a fairly niche market item. People who want to run across maps shooting anything that moves have plenty of options on the market. People who want to build houses and craft items from simple blocky resources have plenty of options on the market. The Long Dark is instead, at its core, a strategy survival game, not a crafting game. The difficulty of crafting is part of the strategy. Do you spend the time and resources to gather the materials you need to craft, or make do with what you already have? Interesting choices such as this form the core of the gameplay. With experience, players learn how to better manage their resources. With experience, players learn how to better navigate the map. With experience, players learn where to find the tools and materials they need. With four levels of difficulty ranging from 'super tourist' to 'brutal deathmarch' there's plenty of opportunity to learn how to play the game, even for new players. The story mode increases this by offering a very well structured tutorial to the game as well. I think the Hinterland team have the balance right.