Trunks_Budo

I deserve such a response for necroing a 3 year old thread lol

Yeah... I think I'm chasing how the game used to make me feel. To be fair, everything leading up to my forge run was a trip down memory lane, I love the "prey" stage of Interloper. But once I make the bow, in every run, I realize the limitations more in regards to hunting, combat, and even crafting. Can't make rabbit skin socks, etc, or a deer hide sweater. Hunting is painful... Most people's solution to my problem is "Just utilize exploits and safespot the bear" and I just feel like, if the word exploit has to come anywhere near a player's elected decision for how to handle a situation, then the game isn't sufficiently fleshed out. Maybe one day Hinterland will alleviate my concerns but I think you're right, until then I have to step back and try to find a new game for which the magic can freshly exist.

Most of these exploits have never been addressed... This game is dead now. Still no bear traps, or forging spears, the only way to kill a bear safely is to exploit its pathing by climbing a tree. They do not, I repeat, do not, care about the gameplay experience.

I just feel like it's too much in one direction. We could use some form of easily breakable, but craftable spear, which deters charging bears and causes fatal bleed damage on them. Shoot it with the bow, switch to the spear, plant the spear into the ground; Or forgo the bow all together, and just use the spear. Make it break in 2 uses =/ It'd be so easy to balance this concern of mine. Add bear traps, that would break a moose's leg and render it lame, then you could put it down. Just make bear traps cost 10 scrap metal, same with spears. Add findable blueprints which teach you how to construct them. Make them rare, but valuable. As practical in use as they are expensive in cost and difficulty to acquire. Add a blacksmith location to one of the maps, where one can venture through many threats and rope climbs to unlock the ability to forge them.

I will give this game every chance to get better and redeem its present-day inefficiencies and inadequacies, every chance. I will wait years to play the Long Dark version that I dream of playing, where my character uses their human body and mind in productive, proactive, and engaging ways. But for right now? The love is just gone, and it's gonna take one hell of a honeymoon to get it back. Some really, REALLY meaningful hunting and trapping updates. I can see it now... "The Hopeful Hunter" update. New feature added: Player can jump, and lay bear traps, and forge a spear in survival mode. Please just do it, for the sake of every player like me with a big brain that your game just can't appease fully because of the artificial limitations you've imposed on it. I'm a martial artist, but even before I became a martial artist, I was able to step over a log. Temperature can be handled with hot drinks and snow shelters, yeah matches are scarce but you don't always need to travel, and late-game clothing / bear skin bed rolls make caves a good checkpoint to warm up in. But there is nothing, literally NOTHING to help with hunting. It's always 50/50, at least when hunting a bear or moose. I know if I shoot a wolf at least in the body while it's charging me, I can then stab it in the struggle, and the struggle will end quickly enough, it'll run and bleed out, especially if I use the smithing hammer for the struggle. But I should not be so powerless against a bear. I should be able to burn it with a torch, lay a bear trap, use a spear? Give the spear low durability, 2 uses and it breaks, causes a bleed on the charging bear, and makes it run away from you. That's a balance of hunting, not an imbalance created in favor of the player, as Hinterland would assume. Anything, just give us god damn anything. And make it so these methods will also work against a moose.

God forbid they let me ram my axe into its skull, gauge an eye out with my knife, ready a forged spear before it charges, lay a bear trap between myself and it, god forbid it does anything besides charge me without thinking because that's how wildlife behaves. Right. It's all arbitrary; Realism when it suits them, a lack of realism when it suits them. That way you don't have to make an actually good game, you can just jank every player's capabilities and guarantee their death, thus, subsequently, guaranteeing repeat playthroughs and an increase in overall playtime, guaranteeing a lack of fulfillment overall. The game shouldn't be like this. Wolves should attack you in a Timberwolf way, with struggles being a SOMETIMES thing. Melee weapons should be more effective than they are, you should be able to ready your axe to swing while the animal is charging at you, not AFTER it's already upon you. I'm sorry, but the protagonists are weaklings. No sense of proactiveness at all, they deserve to die, only because Hinterland designed them to be so incredibly inept. Most bears in the wild can be scared away by waving your arms and screaming loudly. I get the fact that you shouldn't be able to do that, because of the Aurora's effect on the wildlife; But you SHOULD be able to lay a bear trap, make a spear, more reliably use weapons in struggles against the bear. I got attacked by a bear WITH a torch out. Why didn't I press the torch up to its belly, rather than drop it? Why didn't I burn the bear? Because, Hinterland said such a tactic should not exist. Completely arbitrary and idiotic. Make your game good, Hinterland, I'm damn sick of how objectively terrible it is from a gameplay standpoint. Nobody cares about your self-indulgent crappy story mode. The art is beautiful, the story is sub-par, the gameplay, is absolute garbage when you do anything even remotely related to hunting or combat. I can't even step over a log. Just think about that.

Yeah but I was using a bow, it has a trajectory arch, and if you miss, you'll break a valuable arrow. I didn't have a rifle, and it's always too freezing to just camp a spot until a bear passes by. There needs to be bear traps, or bears have to attack and eat wolves or something, but they don't typically do that, they eat fish. If a bear at least got distracted at one place or another, you could comfortably line up a head shot; But again, you can't crouch until you're LEVEL 5 IN THE BOW SKILL. It's ridiculous, I can't even defend the game anymore. Every single difficulty aspect is artificial, some arbitrary rule they made up to make it harder on the player. The player being unable to jump, is literally one of their elected difficulty decisions. It plain and simple just sucks, it's inaccessible, no wonder everybody struggles to play Interloper without save scumming. I try to pride myself on never save scumming, and I just end up dying after every forge run, or, often times, dying before I can even complete the forge run. There needs to be a spear, a bear trap, some form of security to trying to hunt. You're not even entirely safe in a hunter's blind, it's completely useless. Why can't the bear get struck by my arrow, look at the wounded area, contemplate, then decide to run away rather than engage me? Why does wildlife behave in such a static and aggressive way? Realism when it suits them, a lack of realism when it suits them. It's pathetic. The only way Hinterland knows how to make a difficulty, is to rob the player's character of basic bodily functions (IE Jumping) and hunting ideas (IE bear traps).

I played Interloper today, survived 20 days, made a bow, several arrows, a knife, a hatchet. Tried to hunt a bear, shot it twice, got mauled by it twice, didn't survive overall. It's just too static and unrealistic. Why can't I climb onto rocks to escape it? Why doesn't the bear sometimes try to run away after I've damaged it? Why aren't there bear traps, like, anywhere? It's easy to kill a wolf, you just have to let it attack a rabbit or deer, then shoot it from far away. But it's basically impossible to kill a bear unless you get a lucky headshot, otherwise you're guaranteed to get mega health condition damage and clothing condition damage. It's just broken. I even had a torch out too, I switched from the bow to a torch and lit it, why couldn't I swing my torch around and scream to try and repel the bear? I'll tell you why, because Hinterland sucks. The game is really good, once you just try to play it. Beautiful atmosphere, but it's all entirely artificial difficulty. They tell you that you're playing as a human who's incapable of walking over a fallen log, incapable of climbing over fences, incapable of using bear traps, incapable of just about everything. I hate to say it, but The Long Dark is just a stupid game. It has really awesome potential, I love the feeling of the "prey" phase in interloper where you're just trying to get a forge run done, and get a base settled, while staying alive. But once you make a bow and arrows, and you're expected to hunt, you realize just how broken it all is. Why can't I crouch and shoot with a bow? I'm a martial artist, I'd figure it out IRL. I'd practice. Why aren't there bear traps on GREAT BEAR ISLAND? Why can't I put down a bear trap, THEN shoot a bear, luring it into the trap so it can just starve out or be finished off? This game is incomplete and the difficulty of it is SOOOOOO god damn artificial dude. I wish I could get a complete refund for every version of the game I've bought. Over the long term, I've realized just how inaccessible and poorly designed it is, and I don't feel Hinterland deserves my money anymore. Just a welfare development team that's spit out a subpar game, but yeah, it's artistically beautiful. Just plays like absolute hot garbage. It's pathetic. I'll say it one last time, for all the plebeians who I just know will disagree because they're idiots: This game is not well fleshed out. It's basically early-access, and should not be out on consoles. The story mode, has drained valuable developer resources concerning survival mode. The game plays like garbage because of that divided developer attention. I'm extremely disappointed, you guys (hinterland) need to improve combat mechanics in this stupid game. All the love I have for it is rapidly dying because in literally every other survival game I play, I can succeed WITHOUT save scumming through my own skill and merits. I can ALWAYS guarantee my success with enough focus and calm determination. But your game is just a complete roll of the dice, and the only way to kill a bear is to exploit some sort of safe spot, which doesn't exist for half the bear spawns. WORK ON THE COMBAT. Your players deserve more than this absolute pathetic trash heap of hot garbage. This is always the damn result of Interloper on my mind, and my mental health. It ALWAYS causes damage to my mind because of the ARTIFICIAL DIFFICULTY IMPOSITIONS THAT THE DEVELOPERS PLACE ON MY CHARACTER. WHY CAN'T I STEP OVER A LOG. WHY AREN'T THERE BEAR TRAPS. WHY CAN'T I SCALE OBJECTS. WHY CAN'T BEARS ATTACK OTHER WILDLIFE, LIKE MOOSES AND WOLVES? Seriously just hire me, pay me, because it seems nobody else in your god forsaken development team is having any good ideas lately.

We should also be able to turn 360 degrees while sitting in a car, to look behind us. We should also also be able to switch seats from inside a car. We should also also also be able to roll down a window (in hand-crank viable vehicles, or electric vehicles on aurora, with no +5 car interior insulation bonus if a window is down) and shoot a predator from the car that way. Small changes, man... Small things make a big difference, I hope they consider such things for future development.

I've basically decided to go with my custom settings world, and ignore feats completely, allowing myself to use none. I'm playing stalker/loper with more extreme animal and weather conditions, but also much better loot availability, guns, low condition recovery rates, low deterioration rate for clothing, very high animal spawns, and you wake up if you start freezing near a fire. Only realistic, research it, the cold wakes you, before hypothermia can keep you asleep, as long as you were initially warm when you went to sleep. But obviously don't use "Fires prevent freezing" because starting a fire with 1 stick and 1 piece of cedar to survive an hour in -30 temperatures is just ridiculous; Making it cost more wood to reach the required temperature is a good realism technique for immersion. Try it out if you want: 8N3M - X0(<-zero)97 - KzuD - TcjW - N2MC At least this way, I'm challenging myself even more by avoiding feats entirely, and escaping the repetitive linear purgatory of vanilla Interloper lol

And another thing... We can easily, 100% of the time scare a wolf or bear or moose away by throwing a torch/flare at it while it's charging at us. But why can't we scare away those animals by firing a gun shot beside them while they're charging at us? You'd think the loud bang and bullet deflection near them would deter their charge. But so far, the only way to make them run away is to shoot them from really far away before they've detected you, while crouched; Aiming at them when they're already stalking you results in a 50/50 chance between them charging, or fleeing. Yet if you shoot a wolf in the body with a projectile while it's charging you, it'll ignore the harm and continue finishing the charge, 100% of the time. A bullet or arrow hitting a currently-charging animal never makes it run away. Why? Why not implement an organic chance for it to run away in that context, too? Why not make it so wolves sometimes run away when firing at them during a charge, and missing? Why not make it so a stalking/charging wolf/bear that just got struck by a bullet or arrow might decide to run away rather than charge, 50/50? The static rules in that instance are pretty annoying... It's too mechanical and not organic enough. All the animals being hyper aggressive just sets the narrative of "Animals bad, player good." But if the wildlife ran away more, reacted to pain, cried, responded as a real living creature with life-preservation would, players would feel guilty. It would provide another effect, a profound effect of "What if mankind's end is right?" That would be a real difficulty, feeling like you had to finish off this creature because you were guilty for its current, wound-based suffering, killing it because you had to, because your life is worth fighting for too. Adding a layer of depth to the emotional rollercoaster, but also another avenue of chance-based safety to the player, which would benefit even Interloper difficulty. And add wolf packs... Please! Like regular wolf packs, similar to Timberwolf packs. I'm down for it, as long as they fear gunshots and get intimidated by wounds, scared off by displays of, say... Swinging an axe, harming them, firing beside them with arrow or bullet, hitting them with arrow or bullet, just having a torch or flare in hand and swinging it about, throwing those things, seeking to take bites and grab my limbs and scratch me up. I feel the struggle system is... Aging slightly, and a point-for-point based combat system all across the board could be pretty good. I'd love fighting Timberwolves if I could use my hatchet against them proactively, I mean... Survival isn't a joke. You do what you have to do. Wolves, moose, bear, I feel like if they all fought like Timberwolves it could be a lot better. Combat mechanics could be revolutionized, difficulties reimagined. Bear traps? Pitfall traps, box and spike traps? I mean... There's a lot potential here. Spears? Just imagine a purely combat and hunting-based update, with more animal mechanics, more weapons to wield and to forge, more traps to utilize, more clothing to craft... I mean, I'd love that. Don't know about you guys.

Well I don't know about you but I never save scum, and as a result, it takes me at least 30 attempts to make it past day 20 with forged tools and a bow/arrows. During those 30 attempts is a great deal of pressure, stress, and unrealistic limitations making it all a dreadful slog to get through. The difficulty itself is so poorly designed that you basically have to be a masochist or a monk just to enjoy it. Yeah the late game is non existent, that's why the barriers are all there, to stop players from getting there, but it's not relaxing past the very early game. It's not relaxing until you have a moose cloak and a bear skin bedroll, with a full set of crafted clothing and hides to spare for repairs. I think you're speaking from a "defender against an aggressor" perspective, defending the game because you love it, but realize, I love it too. I can just admit when it's broken and bad for people's minds, at least Interloper. It's hugely flawed and is not conducive to player skill resulting in a higher success rate. I know the maps inside and out, all of them. I know several item spawn locations, I can manage to survive an HRV start. But even for me, there's too much RNG in addition to the forced limitations, and the result is a singularly crappy experience. The learning curve, devoting yourself to mastery, makes little difference in the amount of attempts required to reach the mid-game. I'm not even proud of making it 130 days without save scumming, the joke is on me, because I simply see how terrible it is now. I can't even play Interloper's early game without feeling this spike in anxiety anymore, because I've succeeded, because I don't save scum. Playing this game as intended, on Interloper, with permadeath and zero save scumming, causes psychological pain and requires at least 30 attempts to find mid-game success, with incredible cortisol accumulation along the way. I don't think anybody would refute that unless they were deluded, or speaking from a place of bias, whereas I'm speaking from a place of irrefutable experience. I've taken this game a lot farther, and played it much stricter, than most players are willing to. I would know what's wrong with Interloper and just how hard it is. Everybody else is save scumming it and feeling professional, but those of us who challenge ourselves to play without it just end up dying over and over again and ceaselessly suffering this purgatory of unfairness. If I want to unlock feats... It's either I numb my brain on Stalker, or I torture myself on Interloper.

I made a custom world with Very High animal spawns all across the board, stalker wildlife aggression levels, interloper weather levels, low condition recovery at rest and in general, with guns enabled, voyager loot, very high aurora chance for flashlights, it was SO FUN dude. That's a game mode I can play all day, but I'm trying to earn feats right now a second time over, and it's hard as shit because Stalker's too easy... You know how it is. Interloper is not a good difficulty for earning feats, I only wish it was, or that custom sandboxes allowed feat progression. If Interloper was THESE settings, buddy I'd play Interloper all day lol, regardless of whatever new content they decided to put in. I feel like the best way to approach Interloper is this: Nature is at its peak; Thankfully you are too. Hold out, until this frigid abyss finally claims you. Have guns, hyper dangerous and super common wildlife, good loot, harsh weather, frequent auroras, low condition recovery settings, that would be perfect imo. They don't need to go so overboard in player limitations. Make everything as dangerous and fun as possible etc

I agree with your positive points on the game... I love the atmosphere, the music, the desolation and despair, so deep it's almost calming. The isolation, that silent stillness, you know? I hope the devs realize that I'm speaking from a place of true love for what they created, and the deepest hope for its future success. People who don't care don't bother criticizing things. If but a few changes, at least, made my early-game survival rate on Interloper go from 10% to, say, 30%, I would be so happy overall. Alternatively, custom sandbox feat progression =/ I hope they can develop it much further, and take survival where I'd want it, and the story where they'd like it. I played the story, it was fun, honestly, trophy hunting for it was engaging. But later on in my TLD career, I just started seeing these... Quirks, shall we say. And slowly, over time, the limitations began outweighing the positive elements, because I got pidgeonholed into Interloper to earn my feats while having any semblance of fun, as Stalker typically didn't deliver for me. It's tough to reflect on it, because I wish I could go back to the time before I knew what I didn't like about it... When all there was, was everything I loved about it.

Topic. I personally find it's too limiting; You can't sleep on a floor, clothing deteriorates at a vastly unrealistic rate, you can't find anything to repel wolves except for torches which can be blown out any time and flares which are limited in quantity. You can't find a smithing hammer at forges which is quite frankly ridiculous too, what forge wouldn't have a hammer next to it in real life? Add that to the inherent aggression of wildlife, and the fact that you freeze way too fast for it to be considered anything even remotely realistic. I feel like every difficult aspect of the game is only possible because of how vast Hinterland's elected departure from reality is. Take away the artificial difficulty aspects and you realize, you don't any longer have a game worth playing. They just tell you that you're objectively unable to step over a log, climb over a fence, sled down a hill, they also proceed to tell you that you can't use a magnifying lens to ignite a torch, that you can only fashion boots and pants from deer hide and nothing else, that you can't fill a bedroll with pelts to improve its insulation value. Lanterns run out of fuel so fast, there are no candles to find or anything. There's also no hand-drill method of starting a fire. It all seems so... Fake? To the point where I feel like the actual intention of the difficulty wasn't to challenge players but to troll them, a deliberate attack on the fan base's mental health. This theory is only made increasingly likely, when you acknowledge the fact that you can't even earn feats in a custom sandbox. If it isn't a deliberate attack, then it's rampant long-term neglect and a lack of personal responsibility. Stalker is too easy, Interloper is too absurdly unrealistic in an attempt to manufacture some form of difficulty. Hinterland devs said they didn't want an action game, they wanted it to be pure survival, pure vulnerability. Okay, but then how do you justify crafting a legendary spear to battle an immortal bear in story mode? Obviously I've just made very clear, the hypocrisy of their statement. Why not allow the spear, or anything like a forged spear, in survival mode? Well because at that point it becomes too easy. There aren't many ways to remedy this, I'll admit it, but I feel like their survival mode gameplay needs a reboot. If anything, they shouldn't have ever incorporated a narrative episodic story because I feel the quality of the gameplay in survival mode has greatly suffered for it due to the divided development. The story isn't even that good it kind of sucks, it's a romance story for women to increase the sales of the game... That's basically it, when you boil it down to its purest form. Or it's a dev's self-insert of his broken marriage, that he wishes to redeem but can't. Some sort of copy-and-paste of his introspective contemplations. The story is literally you and your wife are divorced, likely because your baby died, then you crash, and you talk to some people while trying to find her. You fight a bear with a spear, something you can't do in survival mode because artificial difficulty is their aim. That's the story, after... Half a decade? Longer? Waste of resources objectively speaking, especially when you consider the current state of the gameplay features. Hinterland, with love; You suck. I used to feel a real magic toward your game, I even earned the platinum trophy on ps4, and I've survived 130 days on Interloper without any save scumming of any kind, with a couple other runs past 100 too. But I have PTSD toward your game these days and I can no longer play it, because of the toll it took on my psyche. I should be able to step over a log, climb a rock or tree to escape a wolf, craft a wider variety of clothing, use a hand-drill, etc. You tailored your game's mechanics around easier difficulties, and my opinion is that you have to reboot or rethink your game's mechanics with Interloper in mind, to make it an actual difficulty rather than an attack on the mental health of your player base. And anybody who wants to judge me for being mentally weak or unfit, ask yourself: Did you ever survive 130 days WITHOUT save scumming? Without, say, quitting the game upon a wolf attack, or quitting when you got lost in a blizzard, so you could reload? Didn't think so. And if you did, well, then you definitely agree with me, beyond any reasonable doubt, because you've seen how artificial the game's difficulty design is on Interloper. You've seen the wrongfully imposed character limitations, the lazy implementation of it all, the slap-job that is Interloper, the neglect of all Custom Sandbox players in regards to their ability to earn feats. I wish I was wrong, but resources were wasted on the story mode, and whatever this game could be, it's failing to become, because of that. Anybody can theoretically survive on Interloper without save scumming, provided they make hot drinks when necessary, bring coal and supplies for a snow shelter at all times, I mean hell, I've literally done a forge run on day 2 quite a few times, by spawning in FM, going to BR, getting the hammer, and back-tracking to FM on days 1-2. It can be fun, and success can be achieved, even without save-scumming, but this entire game's difficulty design feels so artificial to me. Like the way you guys keep switching between lightened and darkened interiors every update. You can't waste matches to leave a house at night time in Interloper. You need the RNG of finding a lantern location. But you just HAD to remove the light trickle coming in from windows, to appease... Who, exactly? Realism when it's convenient to you, and a lack of it, also, when it is convenient to you. I used those window lights at night to orient myself, it was useful, you could easily leave a house at night time. But you removed it for realism's sake. Well okay, but if you're striving for realism, you have WAY more changes to make than just that. You can't have it both ways. I guess you can, but it's pretty terrible right now because you're trying to.

I am able to climb over the Landslide landmark, regardless of which direction I'm coming from. If Forlorn Muskeg is at your back, and you reach the landslide, you can turn right and scale the hill, effectively eliminating the entire river route as a necessity. This makes a tremendous difference on Interloper, and I feel like maybe you guys didn't intend it. Please let me know if this is a bug, or an intended feature.

I can easily get all 10 pages, I'm workin' on it now, but I'll have to figure out how to navigate Ash Canyon and banish it. I've never been there so I'm feeling pretty intimidated, but I finally feel the excitement that I should when I play The Long Dark If I can survive 100+ days on Interloper without save scumming, then god damnit I can succeed here lol. I just hope I try really hard, succeed, and get the Feat. I feel like I have this inner anxiety, where even if I banish the Darkwalker, I won't get the feat. But surely that's gotta be impossible... =(

But it says six on the wiki And someone else told me I have to banish the darkwalker after collecting all the pages in order to unlock it... I guess I just have to try to finish the playthrough fully

I've literally collected 6 pages, checked my progress bar in the menu and it said 6/10 pages, twice, yet I never unlock the feat. I unlocked the badge, but not the feat. Both attempts were months apart, with the second attempt being AFTER the patch in which the notes claimed it would correctly reward the feat from now on. It simply still didn't. Both attempts were on PS4, but I just got the game for the Switch, and I wanted to start this version by unlocking that feat. But I won't let you guys fool me a third time, Hinterland. Only if you can give me verbal, 100% confirmation that it is fixed and I will get the feat, will I try it again. Your game is like a legendary all time favorite for me and it has been so soured in my perspective in recent months, just because of this. I cannot do this darkwalker challenge and get 6 pages again, without getting the feat, because both times it happened, months apart mind you, my perspective of your game just got worse, and I don't want that to happen again. At least if you give me verbal confirmation that it does work, when it doesn't unlock I can screenshot it and show you that the patch notes are full of crap =/ I always end up unlocking the challenge badge but not the feat. Subsequent logins to my ps4 game are not retroactively rewarding the feat to me. I tried it again in good faith, and never got it, even though your patch notes assured me I would. This sucks man, I can't express it to you how much it sucks. I know the first page at your spawning campfire doesn't count; I collected six OTHER pages, until the progress bar said 6/10. Then I'd save the game and quit, when that didn't work I'd intentionally die, etc, but never got the feat. It feels soooooo crappy, dude.

But I feel like insecure elitists obsessed with making Interloper less accessible are keeping the rift between Stalker and Interloper too big. Anybody can prove themselves on Deadman challenges, but for regular people who want an equal balance of challenge and engaging organic gameplay, while earning feats, then leave that to Interloper, because Stalker doesn't cut it.

I do know the maps and loot locations. Hell I can spawn in HRV and make it to FM nine times out of ten, by grabbing the matches and coal in the river cave, then grabbing the secret cache with the ear wraps and combat pants and whetstone in the ice cave, then camping my way to Milton. I'm not a scrub, the things I'm proposing are just meant to make Interloper more accessible. If you play on Custom you can't unlock feats, and most of us didn't want to bore our way through voyager just to unlock them, similarly to stalker. That was the whole point to this: Making it more viable to unlock feats on Interloper, with more difficult... Difficulties, being limited to custom games, after feats were unlocked. I don't need to Git Gud, like I said I've made it to day 158 without save scumming. I'm pretty good at it, and honestly, if the bugged wolves ended up fixed I'd be pretty happy on its own. But I just felt like these suggestions would add a lot of organic flavor and success rate to vanilla loper, and make more new-intermediate players challenge themselves by learning the game while playing it.

Yeah agreed. The one thing I like is that a fireplace keeps them at bay while you're harvesting a carcass, then you can take a torch out of the fire and throw it at the wolf and it'll run. But the stalking from 10 meters away anomaly is ridiculous! Bait is... Well, honestly, I could play without ever using bait. It's a non-issue I think

Sarcasm on point lol

Fix wolves. It happens 1 in 20 times where a wolf chooses to follow 10 meters behind me instead of 30 meters behind me. It literally follows me so closely that it gets me, despite the fact that everywhere I look, it says wolves are supposed to follow 30 meters behind you. Wolves are currently bugged and it has to be addressed. They are stalking me from 10 meters away, sprinting all the way to me until they reach that distance, then the first hill I reach, or if I'm at all encumbered, they are certain to attack, and likely kill me. It happens mostly in the early-game when avoiding wolves is most important. Also, baiting is currently broken. I had a wolf following me from 10 meters away today, and I tried to drop TWO rabbit carcasses, TWO, and it ignored both, and walked over both of them to finish me off and end my run. Other people drop bait on youtube and the wolf walks back and forth in one spot, totally buggy behavior. Bug fix wolf stalking, and bug fix wolf baiting. It is unacceptable for Interloper, as nearly-impossible as it already is, to be burdened with WOLF bugs. I don't save scum. This ends good runs, and it's not acceptable. I actually uninstalled the game today because I can't deal with it. Baiting should be one thing: They approach it, they eat it, they leave. If you're too close to the wolf and giving off scent, it may not work. That's okay. But the wolf shouldn't sprint up to 10m away from you, and THEN start stalking you, and THEN ignore your attempts to feed it bait. That's just broken and ridiculous. However I will say, throwing a torch works 100% of the time now to scare away a wolf who's running at you to attack you. If a wolf starts charging, and you throw a torch, it WILL repel the wolf, as long as you throw it directly at it. I've tested this on Interloper plenty of times now to know it always works. But these other anomalies are too unpredictable.

The most common complaint I see from average players is that Stalker is too easy, while Interloper is too hard. I've been brainstorming a couple of suggestions for making Interloper more accessible to intermediate players. If players want a super demanding and nearly-impossible experience, you can still get that on Interloper, even with the suggestions I'm going to propose; But given the fact that you can earn feats on Interloper, these changes I'm proposing could encourage new players to challenge themselves more, and go for feat unlocks on Interloper rather than cheesing the game on Voyager, just to unlock the feats in PREPARATION for Interloper. It's too disproportionately hard, while stalker is way too easy; I think we can all agree on that. Your chance of making it to midgame on Interloper (Full set of animal hide clothing, and forge run completed) is roughly 15%. Nobody is exempt from that possibility, I say that being someone who knows every survival trick in the book. Back-of-cave warmth, coal, wolf routes. The changes I'm proposing will slightly, SLIGHTLY improve your chances of success, but overall, the difficulty of the... Difficulty, will remain the same. Your chance of death to a random wolf attack or getting lost in a blizzard, will remain the same. What makes me an expert at Interloper is the fact that I've survived 158 days without any save scumming of any kind. Had a couple other runs around 110-130 days, I personally trained myself to no longer save scum, so no quitting the game before it saves, no closing the application when I'm lost in a blizzard or in a wolf struggle, none of that crap. This process taught me what was balanced, and what was unbalanced about Interloper; I eventually deduced the reasons why stalker was too easy, and Interloper was too hard. I know the concept of Interloper is to BE unbalanced, I get that, but it can - and does - go a little too far in that direction. Let the masochists do their deadman challenge on custom difficulty. But if players want to earn feats, and Stalker is too easy while Interloper is too hard, then we're left with one option: Make Interloper more accessible to budding intermediate players who have completed the challenges and the story episodes, who want to earn trophies and feats while being immensely challenged. So with that said, here are my criticisms and suggestions. First criticism/suggestion: Resting. This is more of a game-mechanic issue, rather than a purely interloper issue. The player should be able to rest on couches, chairs, even bare spots on the floor. If you are in the back of a cave and you've put a couple pieces of coal in a fire, you should be able to sleep on the cave floor as a last resort. OR, alternatively, a player should be able to remove blankets from beds, then use a sewing kit to craft them into bedrolls, with whatever bed you took the blanket from permanently losing the warmth bonus it had. I've often thought about the idea of improving bedrolls too. Imagine if you could combine 6 rabbit pelts, or 2 deer/wolf pelts to a bedroll to improve its condition reduction rate and warmth bonus. This would be an early-game buffer to interloper; Instead of focusing on crafting mitts, the hat, boots, or pants, you focus on crafting a bedroll and hording some coal, to facilitate long-range travel and zone clearing. Your chance of dying remains the same, you're still just as likely to die to a wolf struggle or a blizzard you get lost in, especially since you opted for a bedroll improvement rather than a clothing-based armor and temperature improvement. But this would effectively mean that any player who knows the maps really well would be able to best utilize the bedroll to get around during the early-game, and boost their survivability. Most interloper worlds, for me, result in fully looting 1 zone, for example pleasant valley, then getting jumped by a random wolf that I didn't see coming. That element of the game wouldn't change. But I feel like whether or not you can sleep in a cave should not be a matter of RNG, should not be a matter of whether or not you find a bedroll. Hell, even if you let players loot cardboard boxes, and lay them out as makeshift bedrolls that only last one use, that's still better than not being able to have a bedroll alternative at all. If you're dead tired and cannot sprint during a blizzard, and you're in a cave with tons of fire fuel, then you SHOULD be able to rest there, one way or another. It should simply be more accessible. I don't even mind if you can't sleep on the floor, stone floors sap your warmth rapidly in real life. It's not viable. But crafting a bedroll from a blanket found on a bed should be a possibility. Potentially even the ability to layer your bedroll with more blankets to improve its warmth value, make it weigh more, and increase its repair cost, making whatever bed you took the blanket from lose its warmth bonus. Second criticism/suggestion: More animal-hide clothing options, and reduced decay rate for clothing stored in containers. I think we pretty much all unanimously hate the fact that if you store a wool ear wrap in a locker, it will lose 50% condition in 20 days. Maybe you could make it so clothing stored indoors in containers has a 75% reduced decay rate? Maybe you could only designate this buff to specific containers; Lockers, storage chests, etc. Maybe if a container has 30 KG of space or higher, it reduces the decay rate of stored clothing by 75%. Just a suggestion. But on the topic of clothing, animal hide clothing, we could TOTALLY use more of that to craft. I imagine rabbit long johns, deer shirts, wolf hats, bear accessories, etc. It would prolong the end-game stages, giving you more to do. Also boosts your survivability, for players who'd love to do faithful cartographer on Interloper, along with many of the other well-thought out accomplishments available to earn. I would LOVE to have unlocked faithful cartographer on Interloper, but because it was so hard, with such a demanding level of entry, I had already gotten it on Voyager, which meant I had nothing meaningful to do at day 150 on Interloper. I screwed around until I lost my run to stupidity, and I feel like if we tweak the difficulty of Interloper, just a little bit, like with suggestions similar to these, then some other lucky souls could experience this game's grace and formidable difficulty, while also being able to achieve the platinum trophy or the ultimate achievement exclusively on Interloper. Incentive to EMBRACE the game on Interloper difficulty, that's what I'd love to create. Third criticism/suggestion: Fix wolves. It happens 1 in 20 times where a wolf chooses to follow 10 meters behind me instead of 30 meters behind me. It literally follows me so closely that it gets me, despite the fact that everywhere I look, it says wolves are supposed to follow 30 meters behind you. Wolves are currently bugged and it has to be addressed. They are stalking me from 10 meters away, sprinting all the way to me until they reach that distance, then the first hill I reach, or if I'm at all encumbered, they are certain to attack, and likely kill me. It happens mostly in the early-game when avoiding wolves is most important. Also, baiting is currently broken. I had a wolf following me from 10 meters away, and I tried to drop TWO rabbit carcasses, TWO, and it ignored both, and walked over both of them to finish me off and end my run. Other people drop bait on youtube and the wolf walks back and forth in one spot, totally buggy behavior. Bug fix wolf stalking, and bug fix wolf baiting. It is unacceptable for Interloper, as nearly-impossible as it already is, to be burdened with WOLF bugs. I don't save scum. This ends good runs, and it's not acceptable. Baiting should be one thing: They approach it, they eat it, they leave. If you're too close to the wolf, it may not work. That's okay. But the wolf shouldn't sprint up to 10m away from you, and THEN start stalking you. That's just broken and ridiculous and has no place in the game. That's basically it, I believe those three criticisms/suggestions would make the game a lot better. Fixing wolves being chief among them. I actually deleted the entire Long Dark application off my ps4 today because of that 10 meter stalking bug, because that wolf also ignored, completely ignored, two rabbits I'd dropped as bait in an attempt to stop it. I can't really keep trying to enjoy interloper anymore, it's a little too unforgiving and not in a healthy challenge way, but in a disruptive and mentally harming way. If wolves were functioning normally, and not bugging out, it'd be another story. But if they can stalk from 10 meters away and flat-out ignore bait, then it's broken and unenjoyable. It only happens 1 in 20 stalks too, so the game lulls you into a false sense of function and perceived limitation, only to pull a fast one on you and punish you horribly. Anyway that's it... Hope you guys like my ideas.