Random Guy

Yup. Unless I'm mistake: Marks = moose soon. No marks = moose will never spawn here on your save file. That side, any time I sleep near a marked area where I haven't killed a moose, the moose shows up pretty quickly, sometimes the next morning. Moose can spawn a short ways away from the markings, though. E.g. the one near trappers will spawn over the hill in sight of the cabin, not at the markings, generally.

I just don't think loot balance of specific areas is that important really. You're going to fit into one of two camps playing a traditional game of interloper: 1) Get only the essential mid-term stuff and grind your way to boredom for a few hundred days (probably skip BR,TWM,HRV,BI, and DP entirely) or 2) Loot absolutely everything in the entire game with long term value (matches/saplings/unique clothing/cloth/metal) Basically, if it has a single box of matches, it's worth visiting in #2, and in #1 TWM just fits in with half the world. So the loot only really matters as a first time experience imo. Personally, I found it very impressive. My first time I got to the summit on interloper, I did it without a map or previous experience, and got to the summit with absolutely no resources whatsoever (literally started with 14 coal and 40 cat tails, got hopelessly lost, managed to make it with a stick and 5 stalks) , thinking "Well, at least I climbed this darned thing, now I can die in peace". Got there and basically had a glorious feast for days, the food and windhshielded wood boxes alone being the prize in this case. And (in TWM tradition) said screw the climb down home and sprained every bone in my body hopping down xD

Well, there's a lot of stuff in the containers, but long term it mostly boils down to: -An ear wrap -About 50 matches charges -8 flare gun shells -(edit: Forgot the coffeeeeeeee. Critical miss) Better loot than all of broken railroad in any case xD Honestly the shells are pretty nice and you won't necessarily find an ear wrap anywhere else. Would definitely love a moose hide, though. Was pretty annoyed when I traveled to peak cave in HRV one time and the moose carcass wasn't there: only seems to be a chance. Re: OP's thoughts on randomized loot. I think it would be cool. Although I wonder if the loot should really be that great in the first place, given you can get there almost immediately if you spawn in TWM and find a hacksaw in the mountaineer's hut so you can make coffee. If there were more loot I think hacksaws should be removed from TWM, although this would take away the fun of TWM-only games. Edit: Actually, given that currently the "best start" is probably climbing the summit on day 2, it probably doesn't need more stuff really. While the long term stuff is questionable, the short term stuff is super nice. And long term, you'll probably go there anyways because why the heck not right?

There's many mysteries to wolf struggles, here's one more piece of the puzzle: Does weapon condition have an effect in battle? Hypothesis: Lowered weapon condition makes wolf struggles more difficult Conclusion after study: Hypothesis rejected- weapon condition has no effect whatsoever on the outcome of a wolf struggle. Thoughts: This is probably a good thing, given you are not given a selection of weapons (merely "slashing/slicing/etc) and would otherwise have no way of choosing your 90% condition axe over your 30% one if you carried two. This also makes late game interloper less annoying if you run out of whetstones and prefer the hatchet to hammer: just craft a new improvised hatchet when it gets lower. Additionally, you can wait until 80% condition to repair your hammer. Methodology: Naked 100% condition stalker character with a hatchet walks into a wolf with 70% fatigue. First case: Hatchet at 100% condition. Second case: Hatchet at 18% condition. No autoclicker was used. Small sample size. This should be enough to detect "any difference at all" as opposed to the amount imo. Raw data: Case 1: Perfect condition hatchet Conditions after battle: 68 63 49 91 62 78 56 58 Avg condition: ~66 Avg Condition loss: ~34 Case 2: Damaged hatchet Conditions after battle: 63 42 57 45 97 88 68 80 Avg condition: ~68 Avg Condition loss: ~32 Data analysis and graphs: Too lazy, make your own