Mistral

As Deadman player I'm constantly making fires for travelling/buffs/harvesting/whatever, and simultaneously almost always producing water. And that is even if I don't need it (around 2 liters on the packpack is optimal) and decide to leave it behind. Because why not. There's always excess water and excess waiting besides fires, I have never felt the need to try to fasten the boiling process for just regular water. As for teas, one should always have few of them on the go warming up besides the fire anyway. Besides even if I accidentally pick up those tablets, they always seem to detoriate to 0% before I remember to ditch em =P

Spray paint Water tablets Antiseptic Flashlight (not that it spawns on higher ones) Ballistic vest All skill books except for cooking and archery, and _maybe_ carcass harvest + fire skill

Lack of cloth on Interloper? You mean just in Blackrock or in general? Because there is enough cloth in Milton alone to last for lifetime and beyond... with that in mind, not wearing socks because of saving cloth seems strange

For some reason when I saw the title, I was thinking of that bizarre Sean Bean movie "Far North" in my mind. But no, "Arctic" was okay I guess, I don't remember much about it... I think there are better and more meaningul examples of this kind out there though, like All is Lost

Love it...

But they wouldn't be growing them back in the middle of winter in real life either.. And in any case, even Interloper has so many horde tons of cattails and reishis and rose hips that you will never ever run out of them (unless you go fully vegetarian) so why worry? Besides, birch bark already respawns (for non Deadman players) and that gives the same warming up buff and calory bonuses as all the other teas do.

That's right, they respawn on same spots like before just as coal and sticks do. But I don't mind, you could even give them the excuse of wind uncovering em from under the snow... or new rocks falling from top of the cave. Or something plants don't have excuses for respawning, which is good as there are way too many of them on Standard modes anyway

They are okay for what they are, but the dialogue and melodramatic characters are too cringe worthy for me. Also the gameplay is way too easy even on the hardest level. I guess they work well in producing optional bonus content to Survival just like the Challenges do. Sometimes when watching Youtube Lets Plays I wonder though, do many of the people who try out Wintermute but never touch Survival (there seem to be quite few) really get much of a real sense of the game at all...

I've never done it, but at least getting headshot kill with flare gun is very satisfying in itself.

According to Les, "Alone" is very much staged and faked, much like Bear Grylls and most other reality survival shows

It's a great update and region. Now, these are more of nitpicks than actual "issues", but still - Why is Blackrock part of the Interloper spawning region pool, even though on the menu it says "Intermediate" as difficulty for it. Also being able to start there kind of beats the purpose of the blueprints for Noisemakers being harder to find. And as ammo crafting zone, it's not like Bleak Inlet is part of the Interloper spawning list... even though it's arguably harder as such than say Forlorn or PV. - I love the two new transition zones, particularly the Northern one with the mini "ravine". And the Southern one is surprisingly substantial in content too. But I think they should have put one transition between PV and BLR, and then one between TWM and BLR. Call them "West" and "East" instead of "South" and "East". As it is now for PV entrance you have two transition zones + Ice cave + potential tight wolf trap in the BLR side, while on the TWM spectrum all there is one ordinary cave... then admittedly going straight through Timberwolf zone when entering TWM, BUT they can be dodged without too much trouble if you are careful. Also a much shorter walk to the Mine. - The Region signs are all over the place, when exiting TWM you just get "Cave" instead of exiting Timberwolf Mountain, while elsewhere in Blackrock you get huge "BLACKROCK - REGION" texts when exiting some ordinary buildings within region... - In the poison mine, why are the Valve texts still there if you don't have to work around em? They might confuse the heck out of those who have not played EP4 - Audio bugs and clippings in places but these can be expected before hotfixes

It's happening

Getting closer, Raphael tweeted yesterday "Just recorded my narration for December's Survival Mode update, I drank warm water to help my voice just like the pros do, and it made me think of @jhaletweets @Mark_Meer @DavidBHayter and @EliasToufexis and holy hell how do you not have to go to the bathroom constantly"

I don't know, obviously if you were on day 100 on Deadman or day 2000 on interloper you probably wouldn't risk it unless the bounty was magically magnificient as you say... but if you are, say on day 10, and close to Blackrock, why not, how much is there to lose? I mean you can do Summit on day 2 and Gold Mine on day 3 or whatever so why not the poison mine too, it's not like getting around Blackrock seems too much of a problem. At least not on story mode... maybe if the Timbers are there and the temperatures are Bleak-level it becomes more of a nuisance but right now, ehh... even the "guarding" bear outside the mine can be bypassed by the alternative route

BR most likely has the least square kilometres, or is in very close contention with DP for it, but Desolation definitely feels the smallest and is the quickest to just roam through

Oh I read it wrong. Well then all of this is extremely easy and no problem at all.

I'm pretty sure one could (try to) do the famous Loper starvation technique with fatigue meter too, and extend the lifespan of coffee consumption greatly... just drink birch barks on the side to offset the damage loss. As for the makeshift bed, he specifically mentioned only actual beds.

Honestly, with the exception of that admittedly very intriguing HRV bit (more of that towards the end of the post!), I don't think this sounds much of a challenge to me at all. Especially since beating off Cabin Fever risk is very easy. You don't even need outdoor cave for it, just a wind-covering wall and a fire and you just stand there passing time (or doing whatever mundane chores like breaking torches to sticks or crafting reishis). Or better still go to a fishing cabin and fish while you kill of time with your proof protected fire. On lower difficulties like Stalker and below you don't even need that fire, just keep passing time there in the snow by the door. Or depending on wind direction, switch to the side of the house where the wall protects you from it. Even if you eventually somehow start taking excess damage, just go back inside for an hour and come back outside passing time. Repeat it... It's like laughing to the face of Cabin Fever. Your clothes will detoriate a bit more when you do this thing for longer periods of time but who cares as there is almost endless supply of cloth and animal fur available. Forlorn and Timberwolf technically do not have indoor-indoor locations but they have wind-covered fireplaces with beds next to em where you can take fearless 12 hour naps. So as long you have something to burn there is absolutely no problem in staying in either of those for weeks and weeks. Especially FM since the map is so compact in size and there's a cave with respawning coal not so far. Both have good stick spawns next to the houses too. Furthermore once you do decide to go after the 14 days have expired, both have easy access to more houses. ML and BR are obviously very near to FM forge and PV bunker is within five minute walk from Mountaineers. The AC ground level cabin isn't far off either. Ravine, Winding River qnd Crumbling Highway have nothing in terms of indoor beds of course but without the 14 day rule you can easily walk through both in no time. Also, Milton basin has the same case as with FM and TWM. Now, as said the only place where this challenge could realistically lead to actual problems would be HRV. Normally, the Milton trailer near to the HRV cave entrance isn't that far off, and you can do a day trip from there whether you have bedroll or not. Also excluding the 14 day rule and just speaking generally, the actual % damage you take from lack of sleep itself is very slow and minimal so even if you end up uber exhausted at the back end of HRV you shouldn't end up dying with proper strategy... unless you are playing Deadman or if there's a massive headwind blizzard and you succumb to effects of it. I guess rope climbs could theoretically be problematic but that's why you have stims with you, if not coffees. BUT i we do go the 14 day rule of yours, well then it is a challenge indeed. You would need a million coffees indeed, there is no denying that. In fact, I would leave HRV as last place to go in order to have those hordes of coffees with you. All in all, snowshelter-sleeping-only challenge is much more intriguing to me, that's an actual challenge. HOWEVER, 14 days in HRV without any sleep whatsoever does sound interesting to me, that thing would be nice to experience on harder difficulty. The coffee hoarding process for it could be quite tedious on Loper loot tables but then finally actually going there, hmm...

The suffocation bit would be fine even on Loper/Deadman if there was valuable oneoff item at the end of the mine... would certainly make the trip more stressing than the AC gold mine currently but maybe in a good way... Anyhow, there was interesting bit from Raphael on twitter regarding the costs of each new Survival region. Apparently it's roughly around 300K , and that's when using mostly premade assets... Episodes are couple a million each There are no dates yet but I'm expecting brief announcement next week, followed by release roughly around 6-8th of December. Either that or 13-15th. The reasons: they want the update out way before Christmas, so they can patch em out with initial hotfixes, and also early in the week so that they don't happen to release a broken version for a weekend. Bleak Inlet and Ash Canyon certainly followed this.

Relentless Night can also modify the indoor temperatures to be colder and non-static so it's definitely a challenge in addition to those nightmarish outdoor temperatures

Well, in those temperatures different kind of hazy fog actually does form quite often (can tell from own experience), particularly because it's often very calm in those circumstances... but it is not as thick as the one in TLD. TLD fog looks more like +2 celcius weather. Anyhow RE: topic, my own experiences in the game have been in the 60's too. I have seen that the Relentless Night mod can bring it down to something ridiculous as -120 celcius, where the temp meter literally drops like a stone the second you step outside, but mods are what they are

While I otherwise agree I'd still argue that Interloper also has massive amount of loot, I never understand people who say there's nothing in it

I have their voices always muted but the very worst were always the "surrounded by snow and nothing to drink" + "the guy who drank his own pee..." -lines because of how absurd and laughably untrue they are

Yeeeeeeees this is something I've wanted for a long time. In fact I'd say zero hours of daylight, the polar night, in the middle of winter in December and January would be the most effective and realistic way... I mean you could still have 2-3 hours of non-darkness, you know murky overcast or clear skies at noon, but no actual sun. That's basically my Christmas time world. However if you went to that extreme, you'd also have to make summer months with sun that never sets for few months. At the very least I wish there was a custom option to determine static time of the day for sunrise and sunset. Right now the only options are Default and Endless Night but you could have so much more quite easily...

I have it muted, just as the character voices are also muted, BUT I do love the Ash Canyon "theme" song