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

3 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

...

Moderately annoying:

• Picking up items is sometimes difficult, the dot will not appear unless you approach the item from certain angle. Many rabbits escaped this way

...

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*

On 8/3/2021 at 4:34 PM, Leeanda said:

I don't play voyager because of the bear! I hate that scene with all the screaming! If it was a lot shorter I might consider moving up!☺

Not so bothered about the wolves except the cannery one! I only kill wolves for the coat anyway unless I'm really short on food!

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 😅

2 minutes ago, Karl Grylls said:

There were some things that had been added to the game because people wanted it. The ability to place items in the world for example. The placement was later improved, i was one of the people who wanted that. Could still get an improvement imo). The Darkwalker event was so succesfull, that many many people wanted it to be a challenge. Hinterland added that. And years ago, fans wanted a region completeley without any man made structures and Hinterland added Hushed River Valley.

Also some years ago i fantasized in this forum about how it would be if we had a smell system. Like you're sitting in the woods, cooking food and a bear or wolves (or both) can smell it? Realistically, the range would be very wide, i would say the whole map since bears have the best noses. But gameplaywise this would just destroy anything Anyway, i believe it was a few months laterm they added the smell mechanic when carrying meat or guts/hides. In the same update we got the ability to quarter corpses - a long wanted fan feature also.

So they have their vision for the game, but they also listen. And when it fits, then it fits. Or maybe they had the same idea already in one of their drawers, but time wasn't right to put it into the game. They don't answer, and they don't have to. Personally i would do it the same way, because when you answer on wishes etc. you always risk to fuel/stoke/shed (whatever the correct term in this context is) expectations. And when you can't deliver them because of - for example - unforeseen events, people will get mad and no Dev want to upset the fanbase. I believe that's the way Hinterland does it and i think it's the right way

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

20 hours ago, Satouthedeusmusco said:

@Leeanda

What's the point of the wishlist forum if we can't use it to wish for stuff?

20 hours ago, Leeanda said:

I take the wish list as a bit of fun. Not seriously!😃

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.

9 minutes ago, Leeanda said:

In other words it doesn't directly kill you it just means damage is caused by something else that's related to it like not sleeping  outside due to no bedroll being available?

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.

1 hour ago, Leeanda said:

Has anyone succumbed to cabin fever? I just wondered what happens when it reaches max. Instant death or something else?

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.

3 hours ago, NickBeast17 said:

Been playing stalker for a while now and am starting my first serious interloper run. Would like to hear what some of the best interloper bases that you guys use are. Thanks! 

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).

2 hours ago, Leeanda said:

I did actually start by shooting bunnies! Can hit them fine but deer and bear I seem to have trouble with!

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

On 5/29/2021 at 4:00 AM, Lord of the Long Dark said:

1000+ day interloper character lost on a terrain clipping glitch. 
  Totally not how you want to go out. 

Congratulations, I think you "won" this thread.

3 hours ago, Dr. S. said:

On day 66 of my Voyageur + Endless Night run, and I think I've run across a bug. After a three-hour crafting session at the mountaineer's hut in TWM, I developed about 20% cabin fever risk. Soon after, I carelessly ate some raw fish and got food poisoning, so I ended up sleeping 10 hours in the hut right after the crafting session, which gave me 96% cabin fever risk.

The problem is that it doesn't seem to be going away. Since then, I spent more than 24 hours outdoors (estimated), mostly in the fishing hut (enough time to burn 3 cedar logs and 6 fir logs in the stove, in addition to about 9 hours of sleep), but also several hours truly outdoors, and the risk is still 96%. I'm pretty sure it's been long enough that the risk should be gone by now, or certainly reduced.

On the other hand, I'm not exactly sure how the cabin fever calculation works, so ...

I put in a bug report, but I'm also curious if @jeffpeng encounters this once he's accumulated enough time for cabin fever to be a ristk.

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!

On 6/14/2021 at 7:13 AM, jeffpeng said:

The reason I actually still don't end up in Desolation Point a whole lot is mostly because of the infamous Crumbling Highway, which is one of the most treacherous places in the entire game with 3 ninja assassin wolves patrolling a rather narrow area.

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

On 3/25/2021 at 5:52 PM, starlin said:

I saw a thing not long ago about how people's favorite seasons tend to be opposite of whatever region they're from sees the most.  And that goes for weather in general.  The change of pace is highly desirable. 

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

19 hours ago, Admin said:

It's also not true that simply adding people onto a project speeds it up exponentially

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

On 6/3/2020 at 4:56 AM, manolitode said:

My biggest loss was when they removed the Wintermute theme song. While I can see a few reasons why, it remains the most distinguishing and exquisite intro song of all games I ever played. 

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?

1 hour ago, yoli said:

Thanks for your replies. About "There are fixed locations where matches will be found every single run", I am not sure what to think of this, if there is any design value to this. I am not complaining about the difficulty mode of Interloper in general, the only issue to me is initial fire starting. 

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.