Rusty

I’ve mixed it up in different runs, but among my favorites are Trapper’s, Mountaineer’s Hut, and Jackrabbit Island. I’ve probably spent the most time on Jackrabbit. It’s got no sheltered cooking but the weather is good enough to permit campfires with minimal inconvenience, and it’s got excellent access to beachcombing, hunting, fishing, and trapping without having to worry about wolves lurking right outside the door. If you don’t mind making semi-frequent trips to, e.g., a workbench, it’s a lovely spot.

I reloaded my revolver in the yellow rail car at the Train Loading Area in ML the other day, and the empty casings hit the metal floor with a perfect tinny ringing, crisper and clearer than when they land on wood or even concrete. Spectacular sound design.

I spent waaay too long one day looking around for a corpse on GBI before realizing that the crows I was hearing were outside my actual window IRL.

Well, I am a laughably terrible shot with the bow, so getting to crouch while aiming allows me to reliably hunt deer without wasting half my arrows. I also tend toward stinginess with limited supplies, and find I'm reluctant to potentially waste a good arrow on a low-percentage shot - but I don't mind taking a flyer with a fire-hardened arrow, since I can make new ones with renewable resources.

I don't know if it was my first base camp, but I used Jackrabbit Island as my base camp for my first long (100+ day) run. Nice long lines of sight, easy access to fishing and beach combing, all the rabbits you can eat.... The only thing it lacked was indoor cooking, and with the milder weather on CH, it wasn't often a problem. I can still find my way around that house in the dark without even thinking about it.

They're equally effective for hunting ptarmigan. I thought I'd switch back to stones once I maxed out Archery, but I find that I'm tending to stick with the bow. Carrying the bow, a couple of simple arrows, and a handful of FHAs keeps a lot of options open.

I had something similar happen with the safe at Trapper’s. I eventually figured out that there seem to be two safes superimposed over each other. Clicking on one part of the safe gets me to my stuff; clicking on a different part took me to a start-state, locked safe. Obviously I don’t know if that’s what’s happening to you, but it might be worth clicking around a little to see if you’re in the same boat. For me, it changed the bug to “annoying” from “game-breaking,” since I kept all my ammunition and arrows in the safe.

I hope that one of the options with safe house customization is the chance to make a down comforter for one's bed. Though it doesn't really matter with full-scale interiors, it'd be great to pile on the insulation in the bed at TWM and other semi-protected beds, and it'd make trying to sleep through a cold night a little less risky/firewood intensive. For interior beds, maybe it'd provide something akin to the Well Rested bonus received from herbal tea, etc. I've been wanting to make my own insulation ever since gazing lustfully at the big bales of straw around Pleasant Valley and wanting to make a den out of them. With ptarmigan down, maybe we'll have the chance.

I've been thinking about mechanical ways to keep the later stages of the survival game interesting. A simple one that occurred to me was to slowly increase carrying capacity over time, to reflect the survivor's gradual adjustment to living under a pack. And I mean very slowly: something like a .5 kg increase every 100 days, to a maximum of +5 kg over base after 1000 in-game days. That's slow enough to not really break the game - by the time it starts to make a real difference, you've already gotten good at managing inventory - but it'd give you something tangible to look forward to once your skills are all maxed out and your material needs are well-covered. It'd also be nice for players to feel like their characters are becoming noticeably tougher the longer they hang on. I think of Well Fed as the equivalent of my survivor finding their mental footing after the trauma of the Quiet Apocalypse, but it only happens once, and quite early on. I know that between the satchel, technical backpack, and Well Fed we're already pretty sturdy backpackers, so I don't know if it's too much. I've been trying to think of other mechanics that could take a slow buff - maybe something like Efficient Machine, reducing your calorie needs by 1% every 100 days, or a boost in health roughly equivalent to that received in Well Fed? - but I don't know if that's tangible enough for players to feel like their characters are improving. A few months alone on Great Bear would turn a survivor into a pretty tough cookie; I'd like to see that concretely reflected in the game somehow.

I tentatively think that Insomnia will be a side effect of the Glimmer Fog; I didn't see it in the list of changes for the non-DLC update (if I recall rightly). If not, it'd be a condition imposed by something found only in the Far Territories. Glimmer Fog seems to me like the most likely suspect: we know that the effects of the Aurora can affect behavior, from seeing what happens to wolves during an aurora. Glimmer Fog looks to me like a natural extension of that mysterious electromagnetic action. Can't wait to see!

If there was a rescue option, maybe it would come into play after a fuzzy-but-long amount of time, as the rest of the world adapts to and recovers from the Quiet Apocalypse. Like, building on Jeff's idea, you'd find a manual that would give you a diagram, then scour the island for suitable parts. You put it together and get occasional bits and pieces of broadcasts from around the world. Eventually it becomes clear that shipping is starting back up at a small scale, but nothing near GBI yet. Around day 500-700, you hear that the navy (or UN or whatever) is sending sailing ships up and down the coast, and maybe get a general range of when a ship will pass by Desolation Point. The gameplay ends up like a combination of Hopeless Rescue and Whiteout: You have to hole up in the lighthouse and watch the horizon for sails; they'll be in visual range for less than a day, so you have to make a big stash of supplies to keep you alive while keeping watch. When you see the sails, you fire a flare from the lighthouse and a small boat comes to pick you up. But I think the key would be to really push it out in time: you'd have to survive for at least a year or two before it even becomes an option. That would add a narrative goal to the later parts of the game, when things can otherwise start to feel a little repetitive. I find that most of my survival runs tend to peter out after 200-400 days, when I feel like I've gotten comfortable. A legitimately long-term goal might help keep it fresh. On the other hand, I also very much like the open-ended, no-way-out vibe of Survival games, and the ennui is part of the challenge. Maybe it should be a Challenge game, to keep the Survival gameplay pure, but ideally with customizable difficulties.... Fun to think about, anyway.

My bet is that they'll be more-than-cosmetic variants: a heavier-but-more accurate rifle, a lighter-but-less-durable tool kit, etc. I'm actually really hoping for a lighter tool kit, actually; something like 0.5 kg, but degrades twice as much when used, or even a multi-tool that's 0.1 kg and has very limited uses (3-5).

The caption on Steam describes it, intriguingly, as Vaughn's Rifle....

Would you says it's a... Far Territory? 😎

A chilly night at the summit. Stepped out just long enough to get the picture; now time to hustle back to my campfire before the descent tomorrow.