darkscaryforest

Hey long time player here. I thought it's time for a first: explore a new region I've never been to with an interloper character (BRM). To do this, I'm midway thru investing I expect 20 or so hours into a new interloper character that has AC backpack, bow w/ 15 arrows, a flare gun, 4 flares, over 50 matches, deerskin boots w/ 2 deerskin pants, rabbit mitts / hat, 1 bearskin coat. I'm thinking don't worry about getting cooking and archery 5 since that'll be however many more hours of work. So the more I'm hearing about the region, the more positive I am that this guy is gonna die a horrible death. Never have experienced timberwolves on interloper. That's fine! It's this character's destiny! ....however, for re-attempts 20 hours is kind of a lot. If I switched to stalker, I think it would be too easy for all my experience with the game. Do you know of a good in-between for a region such as BRM? If I need to reattempt, maybe I should do stalker with bow and arrow only. That would still simulate difficulties targeting wolves on interloper. OR: Maybe I am more of an interloper noob than I realize! Maybe its possible to redo this in 10 hours instead of 20? What do you think? Cheers!

I had a hell of a time figuring out how to make water. I didn't want to look anything up until I had put some decent time in the game. I kept thinking I needed to collect the snow outside in a can. After dying of thirst about twice, I realized you can click the arrow next to the 0.0 L up when a can is on a fireplace. Also, I stored a crapload of fish inside had no clue about slower decaying outside. Just figured my food would get stolen.

Aliens

There's nothing like following up a well placed rabbit stun from a distance with a point blank second rock throw also featured: *Walk up to thrown stone* *Throw stone at stone*

Yeah I don't like the screaming either. I usually play with the character voice off and the absence of that is a nice plus (includes silencing screaming from death by wolf too).

I've said it before, we're not alone on great bear. Something has been watching. I'd leave that region while you still can..

It's not silent, there are plenty of howls all around me to comfort me... halp

I play both. Like odizzido, I prefer to mute character audio, unless it's a wintermute playthrough. I find the lines about hunger and cold really annoying because they happen over and over if I'm doing starvation, but can appreciate little quips about surviving another day etc. I think the 4 bars on the lower left are easy to stay aware of and more accurate than the contents in the voice lines for my purposes, but I understand some folks want the least gui visible for immersion. You'd probably want it on in that case 😅

Those are some good examples. I probably haven't been playing this long enough to see the dots between some requests and updates 😅

I think the wishlist is a nice thought, but showcases that there will always be folks that want more or something to be different. I've posted there a couple times but don't seriously think the company will change anything. Also, hinterland has their vision for the game and I think they have a right to disregard popular opinions from the players.

That's correct. Even if you have a bedroll you might be somewhere far from a cave. Or maybe its too cold even in the cave to sleep without condition loss. Or maybe you got cabin fever when you were exhausted and now you have to trot by wolf infested zones at a slow pace.

The stated penalty is that you are unable to sleep indoors for 24 hours. This does not completely convey the threat however, because this penalty is independent of the cabin fever risk calculation...ergo, waiting around for 24 hours to elapse indoors would just give you cabin fever again once expired. So this forces you outside since you lose 1 condition per hour after your energy meter is depleted. You can of course go sleep in a cave if you have a bedroll and proper warmth bonus to survive it.

Perhaps one of the easiest places to get acclimated with the difficulty after collecting essential loot is the ravine cave + dam trailers + dam workbench. The ravine spawns a couple deer, has no wolves, lots of birch bark, several rabbit groves. Be mindful of the wolf that occasionally spawns near the trailers. Trapper's cabin is also great with addition of nearby bear spawns, but you have to be more watchful of cabin fever. It is hard to stay in one location for super long due to dwindling resources, perhaps most notably sticks for firewood, but you can generally stretch supplies in a location for a few weeks. If you really wanted, you could move between several nearby locations periodically and that would probably carry you fine. Other nice mentions is the trailer in milton near HRV entrance and marsh ridge in FM (bedroll required).

Just some info about the deer: Before archery 5 you can't shoot while crouched, but you can still get into a great position, uncrouch, and then fire quickly before the deer can react. You can get quite close to deer while crouched. If you can afford to be patient, wait until it is walking towards you or at least a direction that exposes its chest. Have your bow equipped and move with the deer maintaining as close a distance as you can. Wait until the deer stops facing you and either puts its head down to the ground or scuffs its hoof on the snow. Position your bow for the deer's chest..put it low to correct for the fact you are crouched. Uncrouch, pull back on bow, release without hesitation.

Ah that sucks. Hope you can find a workaround to get it to reset. Maybe a week straight of being outside? I wonder what exactly triggered the bug

Congratulations, I think you "won" this thread.

IIRC the risk is calculated from a sliding window of the number of minutes you've spent indoors over the last 6 days (113 hours to get cabin fever). So if it truly wasn't a bug, the number of minutes you spent outside trying to mitigate cabin fever was roughly equivalent to the number of minutes you had already spent outside, 6 days ago no longer being counted. You'd have to wait until some minutes where you were inside fall off the window for the risk to go down.

A fantastic series, thanks for your posts!

I concur. Maybe folks can comment on their strategies passing through here. I've always gone down on the ice and even then always with a torch or flare already lit (I've never even tried to sneak by). I suppose I could risk losing with an arrow head or two if I see the wolves on approach, but... there could always be just one more waiting up the hill out of sight. My forge main is Spence's where I inevitably end up leaving in bad weather and get lost on the way back. I like to leave a few pieces of coal to pay it forward for next trip to lessen this chance. You can safely hit the ML-to-Milton cave for 7 or so coal per trip

IDK if items started disappearing in my inventory/storage that would be enough for me to stop playing until its fixed. Haven't had it happen to me yet

Hits the nail on the head for me. I grew up in way south in the states where warm temperatures lasted the majority of the year, moved to the northern east coast and appreciate the fall and winter the most

Reminds me of a quote from Fred Brooks, "What one programmer can do in one month, two programmers can do in two months." Sometimes things are so technical and specialized that the overhead of communicating or time to figure out where to allocate talent optimally isn't worth it

Responding a year late to this, the crossroad elegy theme that plays on the menu definitely defines the game for me. As a newer player who started about a year ago, that song just oozes the identity of TLD since it's the only one I've heard. So you have my sympathies, because I can imagine how jarring changing the theme I've gotten used to would be. Sometimes I envy older players who got to see all the changes go into the game over the years, but maybe it was also frustrating at times. To answer the question: I was super hyped and prepared to go up Timberwolf Mountain summit first time in interloper. I was in PV coming from the community center and got up to higher ground after crossing a bridge. Until that point, I had always gone left to the trucks/cars at Point of Disagreement before continuing to the abandoned prepper's cache and rope to TWM. But for some brilliant reason, I decided to try a more "low-key" route and veered up onto a hill to get a look, more towards the picnic area which I had never been to. I thought if viable I'd sneak back around to the rope. While heading up, I sprained my ankle and like 1 second later I heard super loud howls. I couldn't see them, but knew they were super close so I crouched and figured I should bandage before backing away. I stupidly opened my inventory to do that instead of using the radical. When my inventory was open, I heard the charge bark as the wolf must have wandered close enough to me from the other side of the hill. I died from the struggle...with 2 flares on my guy.

Welcome to the forums, glad you like the game. Just curious, is PZ = Project Zomboid by chance?

Yeah like others said there's places that have guaranteed match spawns you can count on, and still other places that with only a chance to have matches. It is definitely a first priority to get these on a new interloper run, mostly for water. Your first fire will suck because even using a book as fuel, the best you can do is 80% chance at succeeding to light the fire. I've had multiple unlucky instances of going through 5 matches 😐 If you're sick of searching for matches and firestrikers, here's some locations in the spoiler tags. Not all are guaranteed. Feel free to ignore it if you want to keep looking: After lighting your first fire, you can pull out a torch ideally above 25% condition (once that fire has enough fuel in it) and extinguish it immediately. Next time, light the torch first and use that however many times necessary to light the fire. This will help you ration fires better. Next you want to find a mag lens ASAP, because that's what really let's you extend your ability to survive. You can cook and boil water in large batches on a sunny day. If you are a conservative nut, you can avoid using matches for hundreds of days as long as you have that buffer of food and water in place. The hardest is moving to areas that don't have that buffer yet. Some possible mag lens locations: Did you know there's a really small chance to find matches inside a cabinet drawer? I stumbled upon some while scouring the dam connected to Mystery Lake. Anywho, finding fire starting materials is challenging when you're new to the mode and not yet attained a great amount of map knowledge. If you keep at it though, it won't be so bad.