darkscaryforest

Ah that's genius, I wonder if it would work for that wolf nearby too

Yeah like others stated, using the flashlight in high beam mode is the only counter to an aurora wolf (I think? I heard that they also avoid streetlights?) During an aurora, regular deterrents like fires, torches, flares, and even a flare fired from a flare gun don't work. If you flash the high beam at an approaching aurora wolf, he'll stop and growl at you instead of charging. Last time this happened, I even approached him with it on and it made him flee (not sure if that was a dice roll though)

Obligatory statement that I've never save scummed a character in order to recover them from a bad state. I do backup my saves however in case something like this happens: I'm not sure if I would count (for myself) getting stuck as an applicable situation to backup from though. I have had it happen, but got lucky by wiggling out of it by spamming crouch and moving left and right erratically. At any rate, that sucks that you got stuck hope it doesn't happen again. EDIT Irrelevant, but my favorite video of a twitch streamer getting stuck:

I have been waiting for this video after watching your early game version! Great content, keep it up

Finding corpses of fleeing animals is something you'll get better at the more you do it, especially when repeat hunting in particular regions, getting a feel for the patterns of where they trot off to. As you probably already know, all animals, except the moose, bleed out. https://thelongdark.fandom.com/wiki/Survival_bow#Bleed_out_time https://thelongdark.fandom.com/wiki/Hunting_rifle#Bleed_out_time If you manage to strike a non-fatal hit, most of the time that animal will run away for some time until it drops dead, but not always. If your arrow broke on the hit for instance, some times it is counted as a graze and you can find the animal back at the hunting site later. If the animal did run and die, a circle of crows will form above the corpse that are useful for locating the animal when the weather is calm (not windy). You can hear their crowing from a great distance. This alone isn't always helpful, since these same crows will be above every human/prespawned deer corpse on the map and can be misleading. When it comes to deer and wolves, the best tip I can give is to note the direction they ran. That should at least discount 180-240 degrees of searching. I have personally found that wolves are the hardest to locate since they run so damn far and fast, but you can expect deer to collapse at a reasonable distance away. Note they can run up hills at a steeper gradient than you can, so you might need to go out of the way to get to higher areas. Bears take much longer to bleed out and it can be tricky to know if you've actually killed a bear that has run off after hitting it. I've definitely had instances where I've shot a bear, had it run off, seen blood splatter, yet later see it roaming around with my arrows stuck out of it. Aside from finding the corpse, you can know for sure that you've killed an animal by looking at your stats and seeing if your kill count for that animal has increased. I have seen that bears have an affinity for returning to their cave/spawn point and often die near that. Good hunting!

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@ManicManiac just curious, have you still been busy with IRL? Do you plan to play more or you done with this run?

When someone brings up a good point, responding with "you don't play interloper" isn't a productive contribution to the discussion. It just makes you look ignorant. I'll point you to your own quote when you were being rude to another player on this forum: If you're not interested in the guts or skin, quartering not only adds 2 hours to the entire harvesting process- it doubles the weight of the goods to bring back to base camp so you have to add that time of going back and forth with scent. If a blizzard hits when you're carving onsite, it might not be a big deal to just come back. Better yet is the consideration of predators nearby. One of the most powerful things in the long dark is your ability to just leave anything anywhere and have the guarantee that it'll be there when you come back. If there's a trio of wolves between you and where you want the meat, it's a legit tactic to harvest and drop it onsite- giving you time to think about how to transport it safely (through more violence or other means). Like almost every other mechanic in the game, there's nuance in deciding whether to quarter or not since there's so many variables at play. That's what makes The Long Dark such a great game

IIRC, the bags you get will weigh more than the amount of meat that you can harvest from it. For example, I quartered a bear recently and each quarter was around 10 kg or so but only had 4.7 kg of harvest-able meat. To be clear, I don't think you lose any meat doing this- it's just divided up to weigh more. Quartering will save you time if you want every part of the animal, including guts and skin.

Wow I'm surprised anyone liked my bad poetry, thanks for the nice comments. So for anyone who didn't get what I was going for, it's a commentary on the anxiety of working with characters with high day counts. Obviously it depends a lot on personality here, but many would find trying something risky with a 1000 day character much more mentally taxing versus doing that with a relatively new file. Also, as the game progresses many players, certainly me included, fall victim in agonizing over the conservation of supplies. I was watching this stream of somebody around day 600 that got jumped by a wolf in ash canyon. He survived that at about 40% condition, but started to bleed so that gave him scent. By the time he applied the bandage, another wolf close by was stalking him and he was forced to shoot his flare gun. Afterwards, all he could do was lament that he used a flare...but it was that or die..so the pressure to stretch supplies as long as possible is just funny and I think that gets worse late game. It's kind of ironic that while the beginning of a run is mechanically difficult because you are lacking tools or supplies, it can be freeing in a way because you have little to lose in terms of what you've invested. Really though, the level of fun (and stress I suppose) is completely up to the player, how much time they want to invest, their current skill level, and even the specific character they want to use. I suppose if I had many high day count characters, sure I might yolo one if I had already done everything else I wanted with it.

So I anticipated that there would be players that felt this way. I understand that there are many things in the long dark that will let you accidentally make a mistake that can kill you. However I think everyone would agree there has to be some level of reason here. To give a completely pedantic example, when we pick up a revolver, there's not a button that will have Will shoot himself in the face, right? When we have the character sleep, it is a more momentous occasion. We open a dedicated menu and repeatedly click the arrows for how long we want to sleep. There's plenty of time to think about what we're doing and it's a very deliberate process. So, shame on me if I forget to drink before going and doing all that, I deserve the night's health loss. I will have learned to always check my hydration first. If I forget, I have some time to remember when I'm in the menu clicking up on the arrows. When I go to harvest a corpse, again a dedicated menu pops up and I have to repeatedly click the arrows to say how long to harvest. I can even cancel mid harvest. I make the mistake of doing too much and haven't paid attention. I deserve to succumb to the cold. I learn to watch my cold bar and to harvest reasonable amounts. If I step on live wires during an aurora, my condition goes to 0 in like 3 seconds right? I deserve that and I've learned to watch my step when in certain places at night during an aurora, but I had to actually go to that place to have it happen which again is very deliberate. I'm on a ledge and I thought I clicked the rope to climb up, but didn't so I walked off. I learned I need to wait for the animation that automatically centers the player onto the rope to finish before pressing up or down. But, that animation is 100% grade A feedback for letting me know I've clicked the rope so it is hard to get confused about whether or not I've clicked it. These are all interesting (or uninteresting but at least more deliberate) mistakes that most players might make a couple times, but then learn to avoid. Each of these takes more than 1 button press to cause happen. But the accidental raw meat consumption is a step too far I argue. It is too trivial to have it happen on accident. You work with it more than the other things mentioned above. How many times do you pick up and put down the many slices of meat from the animal to the fire? Especially if you want to avoid predators coming at you right? It's not like I can just harvest it and carry it with me willy nilly in my inventory. Especially if you don't have cooking 5 and you're managing food percentages? I'm clicking around, organizing things. There's a lot to cook and I'm boiling water, harvesting rabbits, and I press spacebar when I've selected the wrong thing... what have I learned? Don't accidentally press the wrong button? I guess I need to press buttons slower thinking about it every time to reduce the chance of misuse? I say that's only fair if you let me isolate that action in some way (a different button that lets me eat things), or make it more deliberate (take that shortcut away, make me open the radical or inventory), and I don't see a way to do it with the current UI. Here's what I mean specifically. You can eat items in the inventory by double clicking. You transfer items via dragging, but first you must single click said item. That's just one click from doom. So I don't eat items that way as a result. I store meat on the floor, dropped via the decoy shortcut..giving me a way to avoid accidentally clicking one too many times. However, the spacebar shortcut button exists and pressing it will consume a selected food item, but like we established it is used for many other actions, some of which are also used with the food itself (pass time until food is cooked)! It is too easy to goof up and too severe to warrant it in my opinion. And the kicker here, how many times do you actually want to consume raw meat that make it an interesting legitimate survival option in the game?

With some practice, you can safely kill wolves with a bow without initiating a charge before reaching archery 5. There's 2 methods I often use. 1. Light a fire, get the wolf's attention, stand behind fire and wait for the wolf to start growling. You have a second to aim and take your shot as he runs. 2. No fire. Instead you stalk the wolf. Approach slowly while crouched. When the wolf is turned away from you, especially while howling, he is vulnerable. Line up your shot when close as best as you can, accounting that your bow will raise when you stand. When he's not facing you or howling, uncrouch, shoot quickly, and crouch again. If at any point the wolf barks at you or notices you (unlikely if careful), you're stuck and aiming will initiate a charge. You can make it even easier on yourself if you have meat in the area. Pick up the meat and crouch. Now the wolf comes to you. If doing method 2, drop meat before he detects you. Wolf turns around to go back home. Now you murder.

This is as much as a cry for ideas from folks to prevent me from doing this again as it is a wish list item. Space bar has many uses when examining an item you've clicked: -Pass time while boiling water -Harvest a rabbit from ground to avoid getting scent vs in inventory -Eat food item If you pick up raw meat on accident when you meant to click a pot or a rabbit (or heck just mix up the wrong button since you're doing other actions) and press space bar that's instant food poisoning or parasites. I thought I had a solution in physically removing my space bar key, but then I can't pass time when boiling water or well..use it for anything else. It's important to be aware of your surroundings, but I would argue that this is so trivial as to not be an interesting facet of game play to preserve. Having to wait for the 'brief item fade in' , visually confirming it is the pot or rabbit I meant to click, and then pressing the space key to do the action is a little tedious when you're in the groove. Thanks for reading! PS: I would personally be happy with any alternative to help me not do this on accident including a "are you sure you want to eat raw meat?" prompt, allowing me to rebind these space bar key actions, take away the space bar quick action option altogether, have Will/Astrid insult my intelligence. I'm just looking for a way to not have a split-second slip up again

Howdy, the long dark fandom wiki has a couple pages stating that to avoid cabin fever you must spend more than 12 hours per day outdoors, averaged over the past 6 days. Example: https://thelongdark.fandom.com/wiki/Cabin_Fever It works like a sliding, first-in first-out queue of hours that's tallied to see how close you are to cabin fever, or if you should have it. I know there's been a lot of posts about this, but it's not actually 12 hours (I'm not even sure where that number came from?) Anyways, I'd really like to edit those pages, but wanted to get a source before I touch anything. The best I could find all pointed to a quote on this legendary thread: That number, at least 5.16 hours outside per day, fits more to what I've experienced. If that doesn't look right to anyone or if someone has a better source, feel free to chime in.

Wow yeah, you guys are right about the warmth bonus at the back of the cave. I guess I never paid attention. So I left Trapper's Homestead for the camp office in mystery lake. I murdered 4 wolves and 1 deer to get a bunch of food in the area. Then, I took turns going on a crafting marathon for the bearskin coat and repairing stuff in the cave at Lake Overlook. After I completed my bearskin coat and repaired the essentials, I had a warmth bonus of 27 Celsius (highest I've gotten on interloper)! After stopping at trapper's the next day to grab a couple more arrows I noticed the fog was lifting and something magical happened. My cold bar was full and was NOT going down. I couldn't pass this up, so I lugged myself out into Forlorn Muskeg heading towards Marsh Ridge. I had to sneak past the wolves I knew would be prowling midway there, edging the northern part of the map. The wolf I didn't know about a bit down from the cave at hat creek gave me a freaking heart attack, but I got in the cave without incident on day 72ish. Took no cold damage the entire time, kind of don't believe it I brought 4 snares and 10 arrows. I'm going to head into marsh ridge and make a camp, stockpiling wood and food. Then I'll head upward into the milton basin...which I actually haven't explored and not certain how it connects to the town. My guess is its the same little area that connects to the valley between the park office rope to the cave to ML.

Answer: It starts immediately. I started my bearskin coat about 4 days ago, about 2/3rds done, and it just hit 99% EDIT I finished the coat and it went back to 100%...

Thanks for the answers. Haven't gotten a chance to play yet, but definitely think my next two places to visit will be milton and CH. I need to forge a hatchet for HRV since I only did a knife. So the reason I asked about the bearskin bedroll is that I would eventually like to live in remote regions like HRV, timberwolf, etc for extended periods. To make that work sustainably long term, I'd need to sleep without a fire or find an online subscription to have a match mailed to me daily. I assumed there would be times where the temperature in these harsh regions could exceed a reasonable warmth bonus at the back of a cave. The added bearskin bonus would shield me from that, but perhaps I'm thinking too conservatively. Another concern are auroras and the bedroll warding off the extended aggression range of wolves while sleeping. As for the ability to live sustainably in Interloper vs deadman without travel, I'm personally really happy with how it plays now. I still struggle to thrive on interloper, but I suspect it's mostly because I'm conservative with resources and still learning how to do things better. I really like that I don't HAVE to travel everywhere to survive, but it's something I can go do when I'm ready. The various regions give like an extra granularity of difficulty between the 4 experiences. Like when I felt super comfortable in places like ML, DP, and CH in stalker I could get an extra challenge going to HRV and AC on that save.

Does stored clothing decay apply before a crafted item is complete? An example: let's say I have the supplies to make a bearskin coat. I start the process and almost finish the coat; but, something happens and I have to deal with a problem for a few days. Now when you are crafting something currently, the craft-in-progress item would appear as a "new bearskin coat" at condition 100% of course. According to the decay rate listed here: https://thelongdark.fandom.com/wiki/Decay a bearskin coat would decay at .133% per day, or .266% in interloper. So say I come back to finish the coat 5 days later. My question is would I find the "new bearskin coat" at 99% or 100%? Perhaps it even depends on how close to being finished it is? If no one knows, I'll try this out and post here with the results.

I've been obsessed with vanilla interloper and trying to get better. I had a successful 105 day run where I looted a few regions, got frostbite, forged at spence's, crafted all the animal clothes not involving bears or moose. I did kill a couple bears, but never made anything with them. Almost all that time was spent in northern mystery lake at the dam and ravine. I tried to venture into PV, but found it hard to stay there for an extended time. I got enough food to last 50 days or so, but really wanted to start over to utilize a feat, get clothing for a couple empty spots, and have no frostbite. So I started a new character and had a much bolder route where I hit the PV plane crash, summit, and ash canyon gold mine early. But then I kind of ended up doing somewhat the same thing. I forged at spence's, and geared up this time at trapper's cabin. This time I have every clothing spot filled and just got my first wolf skin coat. I killed the 2 mystery lake bears though I can't decide whether to make a coat or bedroll (which would you say is more valuable?). I just got cooking 5 and again have plenty of food, but I feel like I've just stagnated, not really learning much, and am kind of annoyed at myself for taking no risks (other than a failed moose hunt that gave me a couple broken ribs). I've really wanted to move out to another region. ANYWHERE that isn't mystery lake. I've read about interloper players that live in all the regions. That's something I want to build to, but where to start and what is the right level of risk to take? I think I need more bearskins so I guess somewhere with bears that isn't too crazy. Maybe coastal highway. Its supposed to be another easy region, but I've never felt comfortable there because of all the wolves. Any ideas are welcome! I'll post again when I can get myself to move out.

Ah that sucks, but a great story. The longest run I have is 105 days because I keep starting over. I get ideas about wanting to explore new regions, try new difficulties, or try to do something better from the start. I had a couple voyager runs that lasted about 30-50 days so then I quit those and got a couple stalker ones to around 50 and 100 days (still work on the 100 day dude to explore new areas). Then I tried interloper and after a bunch of deaths got my 105 day dude. He has frostbite, no feats, no second thermal underwear, sports socks (yuck), and no ear wraps. So I started a few other interloper characters and have one on day 60 decked out and a couple others in an ok state should I lose my other two mains. I'm really hoping to learn how to survive better in late game interloper in not mystery lake, since aside from initial looting I've spent all my time there gearing up in the 105 and 60 day runs. I have trouble getting myself to take risks in that difficulty because it just takes SO much time gearing and skilling up.

Well, now we know how all these random backpacks you can find out in the wilderness got there..

Hey, anyone know if it's possible to add spoiler tags when posting on this forum? Some websites allow you to specify text that isn't visually revealed until you mouse over it. I've looked around for the option and suspect I'm missing it. EDIT

Can't say I've ever reached mending 5. One thing I like to do to give mending a boost is repairing my rabbit skin hat and gloves as soon as I can. I go crazy with stripping rabbits in part to get carcass harvesting up, so I end up with lots of extra rabbit pelts and guts laying around. So I'll repair the hat and gloves at 95%-99% just to gain a mending point with fishing hooks which are a plenty. Also, repairing those at level 1 takes around 30-45 minutes if I recall correctly, which on interloper is just about the time I can spend outside midgame, if wind protected and not a blizzard, giving me something safe to do while balancing cabin fever. Doing that hundreds of times seems daunting though

That makes me sad. I'm still at level 2 hoping it was going to get better. For me it's definitely gunsmithing since I have avoided Bleak Inlet in the last few of my runs. I'm not good enough at Interloper to go there yet 😅. I assume you can still make bullets in Interloper, just can't fire them haha

Yeah I've been using this as a tactic too and haven't been attacked in one, but others have claimed they have. Also, I've seen wolves run off once I got to the barn next to trappers cabin...yet I've seen bears and even a moose enter that. I would not rule out that there's either some randomness or perhaps some switches that get flipped from update to update to keep players guessing. Just because a wolf hasn't attacked you in a certain place doesn't mean that the game engine doesn't support it. It could be situational in all kinds of ways. Or maybe not. Only way to know for sure is to know how its coded.