rakshasa

It's not just you. I've noticed this as well.

I can live without it, but it'd be nice to have an accurate time. It's not really ambiguous once you know the rules. At firestarting 5, in the "outside" portion of a cave, I know with 100% certainty that my fire duration is doubled, and will confidently sleep 10 hours when the fire says it has 5h 30m left.

Yeah, the purpose of #2 was to simulate the fact that when you're away, animals are coming to steal all the meat you left out. And combined with #4, meant to do away with the ruined food exploit. This could also be handled with an update to how lvl 5 cooking works—for example, cooking meat merely doubles its existing condition, and level 5 provides something like 95% protection against food poisoning / parasites instead of 100%. I actually wasn't intending this to be paired with any sort of ability to "stash" your food outside—it would add value to existing outdoor containers, and you can still store your food indoors, it'll just spoil faster. The whole idea behind this suite of suggestions is to reduce large meat stockpiles. I am looking at this from a late-game perspective though. It could be that these suggestions just make the early-game more punishing and don't have much impact on late-game food supply. Balance across all the different difficulties is hard. As for the argument "If you don't like it, just don't do it", I get it, and I am definitely a fan of self-imposed goals and challenges, but not everyone is, and personally I have enough to keep in my head in a typical TLD run without having to also keep mental track of the goals, rules or conditions I've set for myself. Changes to the game rules also communicate something about Hinterland's intentions about the experience. Obviously these are my suggestions and I'm not the devs, but I believe Raph has said that it shouldn't be possible to survive indefinitely, and right now it certainly is. I'm trying to think of ways that move us closer to a game where you can't survive forever.

I have some suggestions around food and hunting. Searched around the wishlist and couldn't find pre-existing threads (though I'm sure these have probably been brought up before): 1. Meat left outdoors attracts wildlife in the same way as when carried by the player—wolves treat all left-out meat as bait and will steal it. 2. All meat left outside disappears eventually, in the same way as fresh carcasses. 3. Carcasses from hunted animals have a chance to attract wolves, who will come eat it as if they had taken it down themselves, leaving a ravaged carcass. 4. Ruined food acts like other items and disappears when placed in a container. These suggestions would significantly alter long-term food supplies (you'd need to store meat in outdoor containers to take advantage of slowed condition loss, and this would effectively end cooking ruined food). Hunting would be a greater challenge, as you'd need to find your kill faster to get all the meat. This would make it a greater challenge to stay in one place indefinitely, and add tension to hunting due to the time pressure of getting to your kill before the wolves do. Thoughts / feedback?

This would be great, and add some more utility to the storm lantern. As it is I wind up hardly using it once I'm past the early game. If any "windproof portable fire" solution were to be implemented, I think it'd have to also mean the end of pulling torches from fires. We'd need to return to brands if this were implemented.

I did this too. Trappers, Interloper, maybe like, day 25 and the first moose I'd seen ever, newly crafted bow / lvl 1 archery, boom headshot, down in one.

This is true. But there appears to be a correlation between infection susceptibility / mortality for respiratory infections in cold weather conditions, so it doesn't feel like a huge stretch. And the difference between "cold weather causes illness" and "cold weather can encourage / exacerbate illness" feels a bit subtle and academic for a video game Some stomach viruses like C. difficile and Norovirus can survive outside a host for weeks or, in the case of C. difficile, up to 5 months. For stomach bugs, carcass harvesting could be a possible vector, perhaps with the risk increased if you are doing it with bare hands.

First, love this game and Hinterland's commitment to thoughtful design, player choice and risk vs. reward. TLD is definitely up there on my best games of all time, and one I keep coming back to. My question is around ruined meat. I don't personally remember, but another player recently told me that raw meat used to disappear at 0% condition, instead of sticking around like it does now. Is it true that ruined meat used to disappear, and if so, is the current behavior a deliberate design choice or a knock-on effect from a change to another system? Do you have plans to tweak this in the future? Thanks!

Perhaps pneumonia risk, calculated in a similar way to how cabin fever is done, e.g. % of time you've spent at risk for hypothermia in the last X days.

Wow, I don't remember that, I've played sporadically since 2015 but the last time I was really into the game was maybe around 2017. When did they change this, and why?

I agree. Staying fed in Interloper becomes trivial after cooking 5, and actually isn't too much of a challenge prior to that, except the early game. The ability to cure meat, on its own, wouldn't really add anything to the game. But depending on how this is implemented, it could actually make doing the stockpiling we already do a lot more difficult. Right now, after harvesting a bear, my food needs are met for the next two weeks. I can leave that 30kg of meat outside for an unlimited amount of time and come back to cook it whenever I want. Now imagine that meat disappears when it's ruined. If you want to keep that bear meat around, you're going to have to use additional time and resources to do it. I feel like that's a nice trade-off.

Real-world sickness mechanics notwithstanding, it'd be great to see more afflictions in the game, especially on longer time-frames. I'm all for a "you got sick" mechanic. I wonder about how the risk would function however, or be communicated to the player. The way all the existing afflictions work now is as a consequence of something else. Infection risk from an animal attack, food poisoning from dodgy food, hypothermia from being in the cold too long, sprains from goating around on slopes, etc. As we all know from the discussion around sprains, adequate communication about the tradeoffs of risky behavior is key. Maybe the player could have an increased chance of getting sick the longer they spend below a certain condition threshold, to represent a stressed immune system?

I love this idea! Especially if it were combined with meat disappearing once it becomes ruined.

Mirrors are hard and computationally expensive. You don't see a lot of working mirrors even in big-budget AAA games for the same reason. Here are a couple of posts going into more detail: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-video-games-have-an-aversion-to-using-working-mirrors-in-their-environments https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xyjht/eli5_why_dont_most_games_have_working_mirrors/

On my current Interloper run I just hit day 150 and have maintained well-fed since day 3. I just consider not being well-fed as a starvation debuff. It's not the devs job to make the game realistic, but to give us interesting choices. IMO the real food exploit that needs addressing is 100% immunity from parasites and food poisoning at lvl 5 cooking, and being able to leave meat outside forever.

About to enter Milton for the first time on Loper, and currently am practicing a "kill all wolves on sight" doctrine that eventually made my previous home a very peaceful place to live. Excited to see how that fares here.

Nicely done, congratulations! I'm currently in my best-yet Loper run as well, 170 days after a previous max of 46. Can confirm cave living is awesome, Just got my fire starting to lvl 5 and blew out my fire striker so I'll need to try out that perma-fire tactic...

Oh man, this so much. Though one time I accidentally threw the rock right as the rabbit was getting up and stunned it again 🤣 Most of the time I run with one rock only, specifically to avoid this.

1. Meeting Fluffy for the first time in the dam, back in the day 2. 1/3 of a bear clipping through the wall of my fishing hut at night in Coastal Highway 3. Look up after finishing harvesting a carcass to a bear 3 feet from my face, get insta-mauled. Now whenever I do any time-compression activity outside, I keep the flare pistol equipped...

When I'm out in the real world, I want to look up and scan the sky when I hear crows call, and certain dog barks make me jump out of my skin...

On Interloper, Warmth uber alles. Satchel + well fed means plenty of extra carry weight, and I rarely sprint long anyway. So, on my current run, rabbit hat + wool toque, ear wrap + satchel, 2x bear coats, thin wool sweater + plaid shirt, 2x deer pants, 1x thermal undies (never found a second pair of underwear), 2x wool socks, rabbit mittens and deer boots. On this run I've 100% looted every region except HRV and Milton, and have not been especially lucky with clothing RNG. Fully repaired I get +28c without cold fusion, I don't recall the wind resistance off the top of my head but it's decent. Enough to wander around ML on day 120 at dawn with only one cold arrow down, and actively warming up the rest of the time. Most of the time in TWM or FM I'm at 2 arrows down unless it's late afternoon / evening, even that gives you a ton of daylight to get stuff done. It is amazing to have the flexibility to explore for fun, harvest carcasses without needing a fire or even (gasp) harvest cedar or fir limbs every now and then.

Been playing since 2015. Sprains seem well-tuned now. These days sprains are rare for me and when I do get them, they seem warranted. I almost never get sprains simply from walking on a slope with the warning if I am unencumbered and in good condition. But the triviality with which they can be dealt with just makes them a minor nuisance, There isn't ever much gameplay impact from a sprain, in my experience. I'd be for making them slightly rarer, but of greater consequence.

Shoot, I'm on day 90 of my current Loper run and haven't settled down yet. Just hit the summit and it was totally worth it, fire striker and ear wraps up there. I find that maintaining multiple safehouses and moving around a lot works best for me. Once you have decent gear, you have a lot of flexiblity and can live from cave to cave. One of my most successful weeks ever was spent hopping between caves along the edges of PV between the cave to WR and the entrance to TWM. I travel light and keep notes on what I've stashed where in a paper notebook while I play. My advice would be to try lots of different bases and see what feels right. ML Camp Office is a solid choice, I also quite like Jackrabbit Island and Quonset in CH. For struggles, I go hammer always because my #1 concern in a struggle is to end it as quickly as possible. If my goal was to kill a wolf, it'd be dead already or running away! As others have said, avoidance is the best weapon. Carry plenty of little bait chunks and don't be afraid to drop them. Back away from the dropped bait and practice your headshots with the bow, or just hoof it if you're not in a wolf-killing mood. If I have to be outside during the Aurora, I keep the flare gun out and don't hesitate to use it on a charging wolf. I used to solve cabin fever by fishing but it's so fuel-intensive for what you get. I much prefer to ride it out in caves. The warmth of the bear bedroll isn't needed if you already have your other animal gear. I prioritize the bear coat but others don't like being slowed down, go with what works for you.

Was an update recently applied to the PS4 version? In the thread from the guy who had survived 3,650 days on Interloper, he said that he'd seen non-renewable resources like saplings, rosehips etc. come back after an update. Never heard of containers and loot respawning though, sounds like a bug.

In addition to points raised by @Serenity and @ManicManiac, this skill as written breaks from the way other skills are designed, in that it increases passively, rather than through specific action. With enough playtime, everyone would reach lvl 5 Strength eventually, simply from moving around. Every single other skill requires the player to perform some action in order to increase it.