gamesitwatch

Might be a change since the update, but I just watched Thedeadp00l get mauled by the bear on top of that railcar last week on Twitch. He thought it was safe, too. He climbed up, stuck an arrow into the bear from distance, then watched in horror as the bear ran towards the back end of the boxcar, then suddenly showed up on top of it. So no, it's not safe (anymore).

Never thought about this, but couldn't agree more.

Got ya, and true, on all counts. Which is why I actually suggested a slightly different approach in a Reddit post, but apparently failed to mention it here: why not slow the character down even more substantially on a slope with a 75+ degree angle, increasingly, as the angle gets closer to 90, all the way to an absolute crawl, so it's simply not worth taking the shortcut. For example, you can climb up far enough on the slope from Bitter Marsh, and then go sideways to the right at basically normal walking speed, sticking to almost perpendicular walls, to get to Homesteader's Respite at the moment - in order to avoid the need for a rope. However, if your speed would automatically drop to a quarter of normal on the 85 degree slope, you would start freezing a long way before you get there, costing you a lot of condition - making it a trade off, and keeping it somewhat realistic. I also think that just like with ropes when you're exhausted, there should be a chance of slipping and falling if the wall is steep enough. Sadly, I don't think this is realistic to implement, because of how the game engine handles collision. (Granted, I'm not a coder.)

You're arguing about semantics because my sentence is poorly constructed, instead of arguing about the guiding principle behind me saying it. What if I modify the sentence and say: rock climbing at that pace without proper gear for it, sticking to the wall like Spiderman shouldn't be viable in those circumstances. Does this still sound like traditional mountaineering?

Deadman/NOGOA - make it as hard as possible (and I'd love more customizable settings to make it even harder, like turning cat tails off, for example). Surviving has to be challenging for me in a survival game, and at this point, I just know the game mechanics and the maps far too well for it to be challenging on any of the standard difficulties. I do occasionally go back to my longish interloper run for a vacation.

Not sure if that's the case, but one possible problem with tracking could be if animals don't have stamina. In other words, a deer might launch into a sprint and keep running at top speed until it suddenly dies after 2 hours. In my opinion they should start running and disappear out of sight fast, but if you follow the trail, eventually you should start gaining on them and maybe even spot them still alive as they would slow down (significantly even) long before they drop.

I have three suggestions, things I'd change, things that probably could be implemented relatively easily (based on my own game dev experience). 1. Give us the ability to turn any plant off in the settings, not just the animals. Food is still abundant even on harder custom settings unless you turn off all prey animals and limit predator spawns, why not give us an option to turn off cat tails instead and keep the deer or the rabbits. 2. This is probably going to be controversial - I don't like having a method that reliably scares off wolves EVERY time. Once you learn this method, there's basically no incentive to sneak, no incentive to plot courses to avoid wolves, on the contrary, you're going to walk straight up to every wolf, scare them away and keep going. You can do this from literally day 1 of your save. They're just not a threat anymore. So how about turning this method into a last resort thing. Maybe every 1 wolf out of 10 should just ignore everything and maul you anyway if it gets close, forcing you to only use this method if you're cornered and/or desperate. (Suggestion: turn on the aurora wolf status during daylight for a random single wolf in the region, without the usual visual indicators (green glow) - maybe a different one every day. Just make sure you communicate this change appropriately, so people don't flood you with unnecessary bug reports.) 3. Make fall damage much more severe if the character already has a sprain. I'd probably also make sprains more frequent depending on the angle of the slope. (Anything to discourage excessive mountain goating, haha - as you can tell, I'm not a fan of the exploit. Rock climbing shouldn't be viable in -30 degrees with heavy backpacks and wearing a ton of clothes anyway.) Granted, I can already role-play all of these by restricting myself (using self-imposed rules), but that's not the same. Also want to quickly mention that I love the game, and will love the game even if you don't change a thing. It's an absolute masterpiece in every aspect as it is.

46. Forgetting to load/reload the flare gun (Not deadly in itself, only when you want to use it later, as I found out...)

Since you seem to be asking about ravaged carcasses (ones you didn't kill yourself and can be found in predetermined locations), let me paraphrase myself from a different topic: It definitely changed with the latest update. Interacting with a carcass makes no difference anymore. Frankly, I like it better this way, makes the game more challenging, and is more in line with the idea of a decaying world, although it's not a perfect solution for sure. I certainly don't know if it's a bug or a feature.

Couple more changes I just remembered: - no matches at the summit in 4 visits - no stim under the crate in the maintenance yard in BR. I know this was not a 100% spawn, but it's been 0/5 visits since the update, combined with another player's stats.

I tested this on 7 different new runs, same result every time, but you might have misunderstood me. You enter a new region, there are carcasses at the usual places, even if you enter the region for the first time on day 300. (So the decaying doesn't start when the sandbox is created. It starts when you enter a region for the first time, no matter how short that time is.) Say you never went to HRV in your run until day 200, it will still have carcasses on day 201. They disappear after blizzards regardless of interaction. But if you go back to an already visited region 5 days later, there will be no carcasses at all. None, zero, nada. It was like this every time, no exceptions, even if I just popped my head over to a region on day 1, and then went back there on day 5. There was nothing there. You bet it threw me a curveball, haha, food was already an issue on my settings.

If you're bored, try these custom settings. You'll be a lot of things, (mostly cursing like a sailor in a storm and sweating like a hooker in a church...), bored is not going to be one of them... In case you're wondering, it's doable, but it will test the most experienced guys too. Took me 7 proper tries to get to day 50, and even now I'm down to 16%, albeit with 2 stims, bow and arrows, cooking 5 and satchel, so I guess I should be okay from now. I suggest starting in TWM, because that sets you up nicely for the decision to summit or forge first and thus results in different approaches. Don't start in HRV, cause that can make the run much easier - if you know what you're doing and don't die on day 1. (HRV has hammer, hacksaw, bedroll and good clothing in one region, not to mention the million cattails and other plants and a ton of coal.)

A couple other things I noticed: - Wolves sometimes get stuck in the howling animation. You hear the bark, the game registers a wolf encounter, but the wolf stays put. A second later, the wolf barks again, another wolf encounter is registered, and it keeps repeating until you leave detection range. (I have silly high wolf encounter numbers in my current run because of this.) - I'm not sure if this is an actual change, but I don't remember this happening before. Wolves in the region seem to concentrate near killspots the next morning. Happened 3 times in a few days in different locations. I killed the wolf near the trailers in front of Carter Dam late in the evening, harvested the meat only, cooked it and took it inside, next morning a wolf attacked me in the exact same place just as I left the trailer, despite the carcass of the dead wolf still lying there. Little bit later I killed the 2 wolves at the Hunting Lodge in BR, only harvested a bit of meat from one then went inside to sleep, when I took a peek outside at dawn, there was a third wolf strolling around who wasn't there before. Finally, killed both wolves at the maintenance yard in BR, next day I found 4 wolves patrolling the yard. (In case you're wondering, I drop meat immediately after harvesting, so it can't be the smell.) I might be wrong, but I feel like I used to be able to kill wolves in an area and be safe there until the wolves respawned, especially if I left bits and pieces on the carcasses so they doesn't disappear. Having said that, this might still work once the other wolves coming in from nearby areas are killed too. It's also possible that the change is simply related to the slightly different settings I'm using compared to the vanilla loper I was doing before.

Based on my experience - since the ep. 4 update - all carcasses in a region start to decay the moment you enter the region regardless of you interacting with the carcass or not. For example, you start in TWM, the carcasses are there on day 1. By day 3-4, they start disappearing, especially if there's a blizzard. However, if you leave for PV, the carcasses there will still be intact. For a different scenario, let's say you loot a bit of TWM, and you also loot the AC transition cave. If you leave the cave on the AC side even for just a quick peek, the carcasses in AC start decaying immediately too. So if you then turn back, leave for PV and then come back 10 days later, you won't find any carcasses in not just TWM, but in AC either. If you don't leave the cave on the AC side and then come back 10 days later, the AC carcasses will still be there - for a few days. As a sidenote, this makes Deadman with no prey animals (no deer, rabbit or fish) and low bear/moose spawn super challenging. Food is suddenly very hard to come by. I had several attempts before finally being able to reach day 50 yesterday, lost the well fed buff in every attempt, had to take the parasite risk in every attempt. Don't know if it's a bug or a feature.

Thanks guys, glad to be here!

Hi! I've been playing The Long Dark extensively for a while, and consider it to be my favourite game of all time. Having played video games for almost 40 years, I'd say that's quite the achievement. I started playing years ago when Wintermute dropped, played the story mode on default settings, although I never actually completed episode 1. After completing the Grey Mother tasks, I decided to jump into the ultimate challenge everyone was talking about: interloper... I didn't now any of the maps other than Milton which was of no help to me of course, having started my "run" in Pleasant Valley. I somehow found the farmhouse, looted the barn, "stoned", cooked and eaten my first rabbits and I thought, I got this! The Radio tower was still tempting me, so I set out on a trip one morning, trying to find a way up. Wanted to travel light, so I voted no on bringing any wood. The fog started descending into the valley immediately, but I pushed forward confidently (as long as I keep going higher I should be alright, right?), until... I'll never forget the terror of hearing that bark, but not having the ability to see where it's coming from. I turned around, walking from one tree to the next, not knowing what direction I'm going. The fog became so dense, I felt like I'm walking in milk. I reached the road, but I had a choice to make: do I turn left, or right? I thought the farm is still to the left, and the wolf seemed to come from the right anyway, so I picked left. A minute later I already knew I made the wrong choice, but I hoped I can find some kind of shelter if I just stick to the road. I lost the wolf somehow, but I was afraid of going back and run into him again. Not knowing that I could possibly warm up by sleeping in the stranded car I left behind near the Long Curve, I was desperately soldiering on, still believing that the road will take me to safety. Instead, it took me to a frozen corpse, calmly sitting forever, right next to a bunch of large rocks blocking my way. I knew there's no going back. I staggered towards the dead body and sat down next to it, just in time to take a last tired look at my hauntingly beautiful surroundings before I faded into the long dark. I froze to death there, having survived almost exactly one week. (6 days, 23 hours, 57 minutes to be precise.) I was dead, but also proud of making it that far, and I was certainly hooked for life. I'm writing this on the 166th day of my latest interloper run, sitting pretty on a large pile of food, water, tools and other resources at Trapper's. Life is good right now, although Cabin Fever is starting to whisper in my ears again: go, there's more to explore, just go! I think it's time to head back to Milton for the first time since the crash...