Gun Tech.

Rabbits & carcasses for skins and guts, drop em ASAP for curing, while looting as much as I can without taking risks. Then early forge, make rabbit/deer clothes & hunt. Wolves for coat and then build bases (food+water+firewood) at every major location one at a time and loot the rest at a slower pace. Normally I make wolf jerky so I get cooking+harvesting 5 and at that point I have firestarting 3 or above. So from say day 30-40 you can leisurely walk around and kill everything. Fishing and mending takes ages to get to 5 unless you purposely play wastefully.

I love the new behavior of all the animals - so immersive interacting with them ❤️ In a few niche cases they can act pretty strange though Early game this can be frustrating as you daren't go near an animal switching between behavior modes rapidly, and this can deny you access to a warm place or a place where you left lots of resources. I've reported such a case when a wolf got stuck on a rock, and bears sliding at 80mph when hit with an arrow in FM. But I just play on, and most of them behave as intended, and if you don't need to hunt them you can just watch, or interact and see how they react. The game is alive! The rabbit licks its paws.

I would like to chime in on giving the Journal editor just a pinch of TLC! All I need though is for the scroll wheel to not make the Journal jump 1/3 of the screen per tick (this makes you lose your reading position), and for the cursor to not move to the bottom of the journal when you find the spot where you want to type. I can use the scrollbar on the side to scroll smoothly, but again when I find the spot to edit or add, the cursor moves to the bottom instead of the position that a click on. It would also be nice if you could undo 1 step. In some cases you can accidentally select the entire Journal text without noticing, because the marking is very faint. Then, if you start typing, the entire Journal is lost forever, since there is no Cancel button.

Yes, cooked meat has always given stink, which you can test by picking up 3 pieces and see the stink-o-meter register 1 line of stink. The stink-o-meter displays a floating point number between 0.0 and 3.0. This should mean 1 piece of cooked meat could correspond to a stink value between 0.34 and 0.66 - although some types of cooked meat could have different values. This poses a big problem early game when you have to go places. I recommend to eat or leave meat and then go, until you can kill the wolves. The reason we all thought cooked meat was stink-free could be due to a bug where it didn't affect animals (or affected them very little), and now it works as intended. We also perhaps notice it more clearly now that the animals are interacting so immersively. <3 In either case, you can drop meat until they turn off you, if they haven't barked yet. You should also never carry stink while harvesting an animal or passing time in any way - this can bring a wolf or a bear from a very long distance. I think this is what happened when you say wolves attacked right away. If you do this, after the time has passed, the animals are close and ready to attack, without going through the stages of howling, being interested, barking, and stalking.

I've not had this problem, it would be interesting to know how frozen or wet your clothes were after building the snow shelter. For example, frozen and wet look similar in the screenshot. If frozen, they then become wet so that it might have thawed your clothes from 78% frozen to 75% wet and it would look similar? I think we can rule out that clothes get wet in a snow shelter, because it would be a death trap and nobody would use them. Now, when you are outdoors a fire is required to dry clothes. Reasonably, sleeping or passing time in a bedroll should also dry them out, but slower. If you used neither bedroll nor fire, the expectation would be that wet clothing should stay wet - if a snow shelter is counted as outdoors, which I think it is. I take off too wet clothing before sleeping because it's a source of Frostbite.

These times are all better than mine, I'm sure - I had a feeling TheWizarc would get a mention And under 14h is really fast.

I used to favor long stays and get everything because I can stretch resources well. But now I've changed and 50 feels like overstaying. 10-15 days is about right, and it will let resources drop again if you have to backtrack. This is all early game of course; late game you can settle down and have plenty of harvested resources worked up. DP, CH, and BI are a little better though, because they have beach combing and it seems to drop decent stuff quite a bit more often now.

If you have no fire or it's too windy, get the bark, then 'hook' them by aiming+releasing, then aim and hold until they straighten out the last meters toward you, shoot. You might still get the struggle but they will die quickly if you have a struggle weapon. If you lead them to a fire, if the fire is behind a snow drift or behind a rock in a cave, they might not see the fire until they go for you. Flat, open ground is best for wolf hunting. If they go after you from stink, not from seeing you and barking, do not lead them back to base, but drop the stink/crouch because they may ignore the fire.

Bears and Moose ignore campfires now as they have been previously. A few animals can behave strangely as the AI decides between actions. You can scare a moose by throwing a stone before he has encountered you, whereas doing the same for a bear makes him go investigate the drop noise as wolves do.

Yes, I've reported this. Harvested two wolves, got feathers then for 3 more wolves, a deer, and a moose I got zero feathers. Tried different ways like quartering, partial harvesting and checking in between. Just used to getting one or two per animal at least.

This is regarding Outdoors Red Boxes only. Is it possible for Hinterland to release a world map of all Red Box locations for Outdoors items? I think that would be awesome and a kind gesture in this harsh, brutal world. (I'm talking about the game world - I think... ) If the locations have changed, players may have left the Red Box un-emptied in an earlier version of the game so that old locations should be on the map too? (Edit: But... hmm. You probably thought of that and moved their contents to the new locations if so.)

AFAIK there should be only 1 red box per region, and it will be placed at one of the entrances to the region. I think it's at the PV exit. Ruined meat should not disappear when put in red boxes, dropping meat outside is the correct play.

@Changarnier I did the Cannery Workshop when BI came out, I was lucky and only had to wait 1 day to get an Aurora, but I think some had to wait a week to get it. You rarely want one, but what I did to get in the new Aurora Elevator Mine in CH was to bring supplies for a week, then sleep in the day so that I could pass time and break it when I heard the sounds. I was trapped in there because it was a short Aurora, but I could wait it out and was lucky and got an Aurora in 2/3 days. If you're unsure about what dangers lurk in there and if you're going to make it out alive, maybe not risk your best run? This is basically true for any run - think twice before going into BI at all. This is true for BR, HRV, TWM, MT too, if you're unfamiliar with the region, it's a risk. A note that all stuff you've dropped outside will now have been swept up into red boxes placed near one of the entrances to each region. This is a valid reason to hesitate firing up a long run after an update - you will have to have the resources to do some haul runs initially, if you want stuff back at the bases you've built.

First off, I want to say that all of you at Hinterland did a great job of fixing the AI of all the wildlife in the game since 1.60 The new wolves took a while to get used to, but the game world feels so much more alive for it. ❤️ It was definitely the right way to go, and I think it's perfect now. You've been working on the Sandbox Survival part, with some issues fixed and others introduced. I think you will soon have a good, stable version for Sandbox, where no or few major Survival issues remain. Looking forward, I think you are then looking to work on Episode 4 for the Story. Is it possible that in the near future you will create a Time Capsule of 1.74 (or 1.75 or 1.76, if a few survival issues remain), so that Survivors can grab that to play on long-lived characters, or start a new one and play for a long time? I would like that very much, because I could return to TLD and just play as intended and enjoy it. (I've still played it off and on, but only short runs or tests of things that interested me. I'd like to live in your world and enjoy the immersion and persistence, but the spell is broken by the sweeping up of items into Red Boxes with each update.)

@Murpharoo From another post it seems it does, and I would expect it for every update then. FM, Ravine, Winding River, Basin all have no indoor locations which means that if you left bases there for a safer revisit, all of the items you dropped in the region will be swept up and put at one of the region entrances. Except for items you left in containers. But obviously many items shouldn't be left in containers or they ruin and are deleted.

The game got updated yesterday. I wasn't sure if items dropped on the ground outside (with the save started on a recent version, I thought it might be a one-off for 1.62) would be swept up and put in a red box by one of the region entrances. But it seems this is the way outdoor items are handled now. Indoor items should stay or put in a red box inside, which is easier to find and get to FM is special in that it has no indoor locations apart from two transition caves, so yes, all of the items in the region (apart from stuff you put or left in containers) will end up there. Time for hauling some stuff... on the other hand if you want to bring the stuff to ML anyway, it's now hauled halfway there for you for free

Thanks for the prompt reply! But the 1.73 patch notes were vague to the point of muttering curses. For this reason, I made a point of reducing the item types to the exact ones that will make most of what you've done until that day a waste of time, dividing them into indoors and outdoors to reduce them more, just to make it specific enough to answer. Which of these items were affected; which from the 1.69 save will be lost completely in 1.74, and which will be moved to red boxes? (Tools include forged items.) The most important ones are of course the ones that are lost completely.

I have technical support questions about a sandbox Survivor that I started on 1.69: If I didn't play on him on 1.71-1.73, will items I left indoors outside containers at various bases still be where I left them? (E.g. matches, firewood, food, water, cloth/leather, curing stuff and tools.) If I didn't play on him on 1.71-1.73, will items I left outdoors be where I left them or moved into red boxes and accessible from there? (E.g. ruined meat, firewood.)

Top stuff! ❤️ Can't wait to get verification somehow and then I can continue on my Survivor

If you can't crouch past hugging a wall to create distance or go behind something to keep them out of line of sight, you can distract them by throwing a stone (without aiming, as mentioned) where you want the wolf to go investigate. If there's a rabbit or deer between you and the wolf, you can also throw stones to try to make them go towards the wolf. But be near a safe place! The wolf might hunt it towards you, and then it will turn off it and attack you! If there's not strong wind, you can light a fire, go to the wolf and get a bark, lead him to the fire, wait for it to stand and growl, and then aim a stone (without throwing it!!) He will be scared and run in some direction, then quickly snap out of it and get back on patrol or stalk you again, depending on distance. This makes narrow passages such as Crumbling Highway difficult, because you can't always light the fire to the side of the passage, but before the passage. Then it might take several tries, during which any of a number of dangerous events could happen, including the fire being blown out. Crouching for 10 minutes to get past 1 wolf is safer. If you want, you can practice on a throwaway character to get an idea of how close you dare go. You can go pretty close. This is assuming you carry no meat, even cooked. If you have a red flare, wait for the bark, let him go into stalking mode, then throw the flare on the ground between you and him, equip it again, rinse and repeat for any wolves you encounter. One important note is that unless you're heavy/very tired, once you're past a wolf to where you want to go, you can let him stalk you, keeping distance, until you find a safe location. Dragging a wolf has its danger if that location is not close: you might run into a wolf, bear or moose up ahead, and then you're between a rock and a hard place So there are many methods. The problem with taking a struggle is that you will scare the wolf as with some of the other methods, but he will snap out of it quickly and still be blocking if he doesn't go where you want him to. The other methods don't involve just giving away a chunk of health to him for free. In my experience, taking a struggle should be the very last resort. If you're very knowledgeable and have an axe or a knife but no ranged weapon, you will know when it's safe to take a struggle for the skin/guts/meat.

Ah, you knew it was a chance already. All clear. So maybe that means the chance of an extra stim is gone now, from this challenge at least. And maybe Loper, too. Hmm... you do have to break down something to get it. (I'm thinking it might drop underground - see the Known Issue for 1.73 thread.) One could verify if it's actually still in the game by playing lower difficulty Sandbox mode, but until the issue is fixed, that won't give proof of absence, only proof of presence. If present, the issue might not be the cause of absence on challenge/Loper.

Currently, I'm refraining from playing my long-lived character with version 1.73, because I'm afraid the known issue posted in this sub-forum will permanently drop some vital items spread through my bases underground, inaccessible forever, and I wouldn't find out until I've played 20 days on my character and the great run is converted into a bad run. I'm eagerly awaiting an update with a fix and confirmation from players that it's fixed before I continue on my save.

Poll needs a 4th option - haven't looked (cos it's not worth looking). A theory is that they still sometimes drop loot (but rarely), but because of items falling through the floor/ground, they end up under the car or under the ground, inaccessible. I might test that After next version is out.

I agree and vote for no third person mode. I wish more PC games would have decent first-person unlike console ports to PC. That's why I refunded RDR2. I think we should cherish and support good first-person PC games, because otherwise the risk is all games turning into Super Mario World, watching yourself do things in the game instead of doing them. The nauseating camera swings, wonky aiming, and weird handling of indoor locations doesn't help, either.

This is normal. There are a guaranteed 9, possible 10 stims in the game on Loper. This is the possible tenth.