Sherri

Days 24-29

Finally back to it, I quickly scour the Milton farmhouse, finding a few books and some semi useful supplies. Back to the main house to drop things off then I decide to go up to the plane crash in the mountains. Here I encounter my first real brush with danger. A wolf struggle and a long trek to scour the plane crash leaves me exhausted and overloaded. I decide, bravely, to nap for just a few hours then head back to town. Travelling at night is not something I do often and I'm reminded why. The wind picks up and a wolf surprises me. After the struggle my few hours of sleep are quickly worn off. I struggle step by slow step back down the mountain. I make it to the Milton house tired, losing condition and with torn up clothing.

It's time to get serious about my trek to the Far Territories. I repair my clothes and read through the books I've collected so far. I eat up the food I've stashed here in the main house but I feel my knowledge gained improving my confidence. I put the house in order and make sure I'm carrying the best of everything. I'm sad to say goodbye to such a nice collection of equipment, but it's time to return home to Mystery Lake and get this adventure started in earnest.

I make my way back to the climbing point on a beautiful blue-sky day. I feel the pull of the cosy houses begging me to stay where it's safe. But the wolfs roaming Milton remind me that I must push on.

Through the cave and back to Mystery Lake, I come out near the Trapper's Cabin. I intend to just stop by briefly, but when a deer puts itself on your doorstep and the shot is just begging to be taken, well, one does not turn down front-door dinner delivery in the apocalypse.

---
I eat my fill that night and stay at the Trapper's Cabin. It's cosy, but the wanderlust is pulling at me. Nothing short of a moose would keep me here now, but the old prince doesn't show his giant antlers here. I pack up and bring a handful of meat back to the Camp Office. It feels like home.

I decide to eat through the meat and read the books I've stashed here. Reading builds my confidence but depleats the food stores. I look around. It's time. Everything is repaired, my equpment is triaged. I decide to leave most flares and repair items here in hopes that I'll find more in the muskeg or along the railroad.

One more sleep.

The communities we join & build to share creations & discuss our passions... the connections we make to uplift each other, to love our hobbies & fandoms... the safe spaces we try to gather in & protect... matter. And it hurts when they are taken away. But we will never stop. Creating without consumerism. Talking without judgment. Community without capitalism.

The most powerful thing I have read this year. By Cat Valente.

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

Days 21-23

(Edit: got my days wrong last time.)

Noticed the first bit of lost condition to my improvised crampons. Wore them longer including on some road. They are now at 95%.

Hunkered down through 2 days of blizzard, reading books and harvesting old clothes. Headed to the farmhouse and killed a wolf. Found a second revolver in the farmhouse, 2 prybars outside and a nice stand of birch saplings nearby. Gathered up all the nearby loot, cooked up some wolf meat from a previous target I found nearby and settled in to read through some books and when the current fog clears, find the wolf I shot just outside the farm.

Not sure if this is related to the recent update, but I'm not seeing wolves in groups lately. Milton which used to be just covered in wolves seems to have fewer. Or maybe I've just been killing them all. 

Days 24-31

Finished searching the houses, then headed to the church then up to the bridge. Killed 2 wolves on the way. Then, while searching through the cars on the bridge.... ROAR!! A bear had the same idea. 2 bullets with the variant rifle and dropped the bear. Took the pelts from the bear and wolves, then made my very over encumbered way back to the trailer.

Wore the improvised crampons the entire time and they lost no condition. So either they haven't added any condition degredation to these things, or it's bugged.

Next stop the farmhouse, then onward to the new regions.

12 hours ago, stratvox said:

I am 💀  🤣

Yeah, running it on linux here, Because Reasons.

Same. Runs flawlessly on Ubuntu.

I'm happy to read this clarification & apology. I personally avoid new releases like the plague until after a few post-release patches. Stuff ALWAYS goes wrong. People jumping directly to Steam to review bomb it because of hour-one bugs, is just... wow. We play this cold wintery game - get some chill folks. 😆

I do however get a bad taste from Hinterland people going after streamers & community members for providing their honest reactions, constructive criticism or just venting frustrations. That's not cool. Streamers & content creators are free advertising - and "chill out folks" goes both ways. 💙🥶

Personally my game is running bug free, I'm enjoying the new updates, and am very content with Hinterland's work, timelines & upcoming plans.

Only request: detailed patch notes please for already released updates for people who like to gauge purchases carefully & don't mind spoilers.

Great work devs. 

3 hours ago, ajb1978 said:

Movie tickets.

Bear with me, it'll make sense.

What does it cost to go to the movies lately? 20 bucks

 ...

That's my benchmark for "is this worth paying money for."

Did you get 2 hours' worth of entertainment out of the DLC so far? If the answer is yes, you already got your money's worth.

I use this measure as well. Excellent point @ajb1978. 😁

15 hours ago, RossBondReturns said:

The problem with that is that they themselves simply don't know when certain things will become available.

In fact if  you read the small print at the bottom of the Expansion page it says:

Where each item fits into the release plan depends on development progress and priorities. We will strive to deliver every item on the Roadmap, but some items may be swapped out for others based on progress and community feedback. In the event that we choose to swap an item out from the Roadmap, we will always endeavour to replace it with something of the same “value”.

This is not something as simple as saying well this will go there and that will come way down the line. Some things that might have seemed easy to do might take much longer and vice-versa.

I personally don't want to know the fine details in the future updates, but at minimum there should be patch notes for what is **currently** in the DLC at present. I know that's very spoiler-y but people can avoid it.

It matters because it helps some people decide if they want to buy the DLC now as-is or wait longer. Many folks have a limited "fun money" budget & spending that for the month if there isn't yet enough in the DLC to tempt them is upsetting. Help people decide when to spend the cost of the DLC by making detailed release notes. 🙏

20 hours ago, yollarbenibekler said:

There is another issue with the prepper bunkers are disabled in the game and it's said that they will be back in future. 

WHAT???

Is that why I absolutely *scoured* Mystery Lake this week & came up empty? Man if I'd known that it would have saved me so much time. 🤦‍♀️

Days 18-23

Gave it some thought and, since this is a voyager playthrough and thus not very difficult, I don't think it's necessary to scour many regions before heading to the new DLC regions. So I've decided to visit Mountain Town, then likely head to the Forsaken Airfield. My original plan was to take my time for so long that another release of this DLC would be out before I managed to get to the new regions. However, I am kind of burnt out on Survival mode, so I'm not eager to replay every pre-DLC region. Let's get to the new stuff!  

With that thought in mind, I pared down my inventory, repaired and set off from the Camp Office. Headed over to Trapper's Cabin then into the nearby cave. Arriving in Mountain town it was nice to see a new region. Several rope climbs revealed that the improvised crampons do indeed conserve your stamina while climbing considerably. These are definitely a must-have item.

Slept in a cave (with a sadly empty flare case) in a heavy snow storm then into the town of Milton. From picnic area to the gas station, to the crashed prisoner transport then up to Milton House itself. Rounded a corner right into a wolf! Took some damage in the struggle but prevailed! By the time I took shelter in the big house and scoured the area, I had found another visor Memento note, a revolver (yay!) several bullets and some improved clothing. A couple more axes and another knife. Not a bad haul. Also found a absolute ton of food. Started stockpiling in Milton House.

Next plan is to search the rest of the houses, then head up the road to the church and then the farmhouse.

7 hours ago, itsLydt said:

Hey could you tell me where the cache inside the dam was? I have the note and key and I looked through the whole dam twice without finding it 🙄 can't tell if it's bugged/invisible or if I'm just blind 😆

I also was confused because it says 'in the broken window room' but literally every window in that building is broken. LOL.

First go down to the lower dam (through the door with the wheel to open/close it). All the way to the far back room with the food fridge, sink and the bent door with snow behind it. The place where Mackenzie gets clocked in the head in Wintermute. There is a broken window with snow collecting below it.

It's in a locked case on the floor of that room.

Days 12-17

Spent some relaxing time at the camp office. Bagged a doe just outside on the tracks and ate like a vacationer for a few days while reading Fire Starting For Dummies and Gordon Ramsey's 'Anyone Can Cook'. Repaired all my clothes and my lantern. Feeling pretty comfortable these days. 

Prepared some herbal remedies and lightened my load by organizing items and emptying my backpack in the camp office. Been keeping an eye out for moose because my carrying capacity and my packrat nature are at odds with each other.

Starting to consider my options. Milton is looking pretty attractive right now... a quick scout of the town then back 'home' before Pleasant Valley and Timberwolf Mountain. My previous trip to the mountain I made the mistake of bringing my usual supplies - 1 or 2 of the essentials, tools, bullets... backfired because the mountain's bounty gave me new versions of all these items. Next time I'll try to resist bringing the entire cabin with me.  Hopefully I'll find a hacksaw and/or a revolver in Milton.

Interesting to note that my use of the improvised crampons did not degrade their condition at all from 100%. Perhaps because I take them off when not on snowy slopes. Read the description and it turns out they also help with rope climbing!! So much for my pitons idea - but this makes the crampons a must-have item in my opinion. Really love having more craftables.

Days 11-12

Jumped back over to the Dam and discovered that I hadn't entered the lower dam in my first time here. Found an extra knife, a bow, some broken arrows (including one embedded in the door leading between the upper and lower dam), some food and a Memento cache full of food! Lovely! While there I crafted the improvised crampons! Feeling quite nicely outfitted.

Later headed from the dam to another hunter's blind and Alan's cave. Found rifle bullets. From there tried to find the tools prepper cache and no luck. The crampons paid off and I had no sprains (yay!) but I've checked every prepper cache location and found nothing.

Continued back down the river and home to the camp office. Thinking it might be time to hunker down, kill deer, then read through my stack of skill books before I move on from Mystery Lake.

Days 8-10.

Rested at the camp office, prepped some food and water, then set out for the river. Smooth sailing across the ice, climbed two ropes and found my first Memento cache locked box. Contined several flares - a nice find! Scouted the region for the nearby food cache. Found zero caches but gained 5 damn sprains. Really forgot how much I despise this mechanic.

Continued up the river gathering cattails as I went. Ducked into a trailer near Carter Hydro to rest and recover.

> Feature Idea: pitons to make climbing ropes faster and less fatiguing.

Next stop, back to Carter Hydro to try and find the stash hinted in a Memento note.

Started a new voyager playthrough in order to enjoy the new Tales DLC. Thought I'd log my findings and experience here in a 'blog' style writeup. Going to take my time and write about anything interesting that happens and any new stuff I find and experience - highlighting new things from the DLC. Follow this thread if this is your cup of birch bark tea.

Began a Voyager game with a Mystery Lake starting region.

Days 1-7

Landed in Mystery Lake - a region I'm fairly familiar with. It's been a LONG time since I started a new survival game and losing all my levelled up skills was defintely a shock. Realized I was very close to the logging camp trailers and searched the area for loot. Found a rifle in one of the new item variants! Cool. Also found a floating book (see photo). lol. Headed to the far west to scout the prepper cache locations there and came up empty. Heading back, cold and tired I started climbing to the lookout tower when I remembered last minute that there's no shelter at that lookout. Ducked into a snow shelter I found on a hillside to rest and warm up. Then grabbed the items at the abandoned lookout.

Headed back to the logging trailers and onward to the Carter Hydro damn. Spotted my first doe. Nice to see a variety in the deer population. Then encountered my first wolf. The predator  free grace period is shorter than I thought it would be! Managed to stay ahead of him and get to the damn. So far I had already found one memento note in a vehicle visor and another on the ground elsewhere. They highlight points of interest on your map. Really love that. Looted the entire Dam and surrounding area.

Headed down the rail tracks. Seemed to be fewer wolves than in the past, and they were typically solo than in packs. Is this new? Made it to the camp office - looted, rested and repaired, then crossed the lake to search the fishing huts and lake cabins. Found slim supplies. So far I am at 5 axes, no knives. Encountered a bear at the far end of the lake. Pumped a couple rifle rounds into him but was too tired to sprint fast enough and he mauled me. Survived, stumbled to my feet and got my screaming revenge and shot that bear dead! Recuperated and repaired in the cabins, quartered the bear and harvested a nice stack of meat left to freeze in the snow. Finally got the Well Fed bonus.

Climbed the rope at the end of the lake to find the medical cache and found nothing. Harvested some saplings and a half dozen sprained ankles. Were sprains always this bad?? Noticed the improvised crampons in the crafting menu. Going to need to priortize finding scrap for those babies! Searched around the lake a bit more, still looking for that fabled prepper cache, and came up empty. Up to the Forrestry Lookout. Nice view. Not much loot. Mapping with charcoal from here is always nice.

Rested at the camp office again and then headed to the Trapper's Cabin. Lots of deer - does and bucks. No moose in sight thank goodness. Didn't find much loot there, headed to the Unnamed Pond (found a knife! Finally!) and its nearby cabin. Harvested a deer carcass. Cooked and crafted supplies. Still scouting for the prepper cache and running out of possible locations. Next I'll be dropping supplies at the camp office then searching the river off of mystery lake to finish off my tour of the Mystery Lake region. Found at least 3 mementos so far. I really enjoy the addition of targets on my map.

A technical note - the crashing on save bug I was having after the last major update, seems to have been resolved. Game seems stable (running on Ubuntu Linux). No graphics issues. My saved keymappings did get reset though so I just fixed them.

Stay tuned!!

Great overview. 

I've personally started a new save with a ML spawn. Taking my sweet time to stock up and level up. Planning to not rush to the new regions and maybe not even get there till the next release of the DLC. There might be more for when I go there.

So far my favourite non-new-region feature are the memento notes which reveal interesting spots/caches on your map. I like having a goal to head out for. A nice touch that both makes you feel less alone (look, other people were here!) but simultaneously more alone because all these people are now gone.  And with the game world getting SO huge and thus harder for more casual players to memorize things... these little map markers for important destinations are very welcome.

On 11/27/2022 at 5:19 PM, ToAsT said:

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

Ooo I didn't know there was a character limit!

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

The funny thing is - literally every game I'm enjoying lately - TLD, Valheim, Raft, Core Keeper, No Man's Sky..... literally all of them have significant percents of the players who are frothing mad about timelines & delays. 😆 It's almost like players never learn.

All timelines are speculative. Software & game dev has a lot of unpredictability that you can't foresee.

The dev who does the QA signoff is sick for a week. I spent 2 days debugging an error that was a single wrong character in 1 line of code. Jane's computer hard drive failed. John's artwork didn't do well in focus groups so back to the drawing board. The music creator got Covid for two weeks. Someone lost a week of productivity to train the intern. The project manager's parent was in hospital. The engine released an update so we need 2 weeks to migrate & retest everything. On & on & on. 😭🙃

22 minutes ago, turtle777 said:

Hinterland's standards, ambitions and creative vision have grown so much the the original timeline and scope for Wintermute could not be kept. And they didn't want to compromise.

Along the way, the financials didn't pan out - you just can't finance both Survival Mode and Wintermute on charging as little as they did for the base game.

 

Ralph has said in the past that finances have not been a concern or hurdle.

So I'd guess more the former.

I think they made a way better game than originally planned, estimating software timelines are HARD, plus they don't do crunch & a pandemic happened - while they tried to care for staff & be mindful of everyone's mental health. Plus this is their first big game as a studio. 

The timeline for Wintermute is not a surprise or a problem IMHO. I get that people get really attached to early, speculative timelines... but this is pretty normal given how the game has really grown from original plans.

The thing I'm most excited about is the narrative objectives in the expansion. I love having goals & helping people in Wintermute!

To those who are worried that new equipment & loot tables will ruin the lonely, hopeless, barely-surviving feel of the game: has Hinterland not earned our trust by now, that they have the atmosphere & theme well in hand? I doubt they will upend the core feel of their carefully crafted masterpiece 

This is the single greatest update I have ever read for a game.

New things to be excited about!

Compassion for the players of all budgets.

Insight into the decisions, reasons for the directions the game is taking, explanations behind the announcements.

Approximate timelines.

Apologies & explanations for the save incompatibility (understandable).

Teaser video & image.

Wishlistable right now.

Reasonable pricing structure.

Oooo goodness this is a perfect, exciting & caring update.

Thanks Hinterland - this is very validating to this TLD fan. 💙❄️

I personally have a different take on these puzzles.

Many people also complained about the carrying of plane crash survivors and the timberwolf attacks in episode 3. And other puzzle type elements like the fuses in the mine, etc.

But for me, I play wintermute similar to survival mode. I do my own thing, explore the region in depth, stockpile things & really stretch the story out. So my default play mode is very passive & exploratory. I really enjoy these puzzle & story hurdles as a means to take a more active role for a time. It breaks up the quiet, peaceful, (sometimes kinda dull) pace & gives me a good head-scratcher to figure out.

Granted some of them really got my blood boiling for a while (the big bear fight)... but I appreciated coming out the other side back into peaceful exploration.

I'm on the whole - glad these elements exist.

Although I agree that some kind of consequence to failure besides a hard reset would be nice. And reloading to try again would be optional. That would also be cool.

On 12/7/2021 at 11:07 PM, fauxjargon said:

We know from the low Steam Achievement rates associated with new content that most people who have bought The Long Dark no longer play.  For instance, I think only 3% or so of Steam owners finished Episode 3.

I'd be curious how much of this is affected by the high number of Wintermute players who have vowed not to continue it until all chapters are released so they can do it all in one go?

I also have many many hours in TLD & I bought it on sale .... I've received an embarrassingly high value for money from this game & I'd be happy to buy some DLC.

This is absolutely fantastic. Lots of great info and things to look forward to.

Really curious how modding goes for the game in the future, and also hoping that paid Survival updates include more regions. I wonder if splitting the game will also make things much easier for Story Mode to be 'complete' after Episode 5, and then basically left as-is, and then resources can be poured into the Survival game and paid updates. Sounds like a flexible approach.

You guys do a great job, and TLD just keeps getting better. Thank you for all the work put into the game this year - Episode 4 was awesome - and thank you for sticking to your commitments even through a tough pandemic, and for continuing to give players more fresh content and great plans in the future.

Happy Holidays to the team - enjoy your time off!

PS- in the interest of supporting the game - if you ever reopen the Swag store, I'll be making some purchases!