Lord of the Long Dark

Of the hundreds of hours I have played this game my recent interloper run takes the cake. 
   So far at 160 days in this run I have found items I have absolutely never seen before- almost looks like a stalker run. 
  I found climbing socks- yes, climbing socks in HRV cave. 
  Also in HRV I found a flare shell on a corpse. 
   I am found a box of pistol ammo and several rounds on another corpse. 
   I found rifle shell casings by another corpse. 
  Then in FM at the cave to BI I killed a wolf just before entering the cave. It was too cold to harvest it so went inside cave to get some coal and grabbed a few hours sleep. When I went outside to harvest the wolf I found- get this... 6 feathers. I never knew it was possible to ever have more than four. In fact later about 100 days in I killed two timberwolves in BI and after harvesting them I collected 12 feathers. Totally unheard of that I have ever seen. 
  Then to top it off, and my motivation for making this post- on day 160 today I was on my way to climbers cave in AC and found an abandoned camp. Imagine my surprise as I approached the camp and could clearly see..... a RIFLE. As I approached i could see it was broken and indeed it was a broken rifle- I was unable to pick it up or interact with it but man it had me stunned for a minute there. I have never heard of note seen a rifle much less any of these other things before. 

Would be fun if this was a camping simulator. 
  As a survival simulator-  ummmm , nah.   Survivalists in extremely challenging conditions don’t bring portable sausage grinders.  Ever. 

Yes the game would be way too easy otherwise. By the time you complete your forge run if you already had 60 feathers the game would be way too easy. 
 However you can “force” feathers to drop if you harvest a carcass. On bodies just give it a few days and eventually they generate. 

5 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

I didnt say that, plx fix the quote so there is no confusion  just to clarify, that bit with the reaction was posted by Lord of the Long dark. Quote selection didnt take in consideration quoted messages, sadly.  

I am not going to continue this discussion past this point cause I dont really want to devolve this into a fight. Its not a good attitude to consider people who play "easier" difficulties just being worse. Advanced levels arent in any way harder, its all just a matter of rinse and repeat, and with enough attempts even an average player will learn to survive in Interloper. Some people simply prefer easier difficulties because it fits their playstyle better. Also when someone says "voyageur-like" difficulty then its not really a Voyageur. Just close to it. I reccon my type of games would be pretty challenging for average Stalker/Interloper player if they take any risks which is where my type of game can be very punishing. Its easy to take damage, but if you can at most recover 5% of condition per day without having a single stat drop, all mistakes just multiply and add up to a pretty challenging game. Just a different kind of challenge one might expect. Single, relatively small mistake may result in may days of recovering, with no prospect of recovering faster.

Think I pointed out my stance on the suggestions, those stand. Someone else might disagree, thats fine. For cat-tails specifically, I believe they were designed to be "annoying" on purpose to simulate that it is in fact a low calorie food that in realistic conditions should be the last option. Game could add a lot of quality-of-life improvements but Im glad they dont add everything, because some things should just be tedious for the immersion of it.

5 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

I didnt say that, plx fix the quote so there is no confusion  just to clarify, that bit with the reaction was posted by Lord of the Long dark. Quote selection didnt take in consideration quoted messages, sadly.  

I am not going to continue this discussion past this point cause I dont really want to devolve this into a fight. Its not a good attitude to consider people who play "easier" difficulties just being worse. Advanced levels arent in any way harder, its all just a matter of rinse and repeat, and with enough attempts even an average player will learn to survive in Interloper. Some people simply prefer easier difficulties because it fits their playstyle better. Also when someone says "voyageur-like" difficulty then its not really a Voyageur. Just close to it. I reccon my type of games would be pretty challenging for average Stalker/Interloper player if they take any risks which is where my type of game can be very punishing. Its easy to take damage, but if you can at most recover 5% of condition per day without having a single stat drop, all mistakes just multiply and add up to a pretty challenging game. Just a different kind of challenge one might expect. Single, relatively small mistake may result in may days of recovering, with no prospect of recovering faster.

Think I pointed out my stance on the suggestions, those stand. Someone else might disagree, thats fine. For cat-tails specifically, I believe they were designed to be "annoying" on purpose to simulate that it is in fact a low calorie food that in realistic conditions should be the last option. Game could add a lot of quality-of-life improvements but Im glad they dont add everything, because some things should just be tedious for the immersion of it.

Ummm nah. Your mode of play is beginner. That’s why your strategies work. The idea you think your voyager custom would Challenge an interloper player is hysterical. 
  Enjoy the game brah. But trust me if you want to play at an elite level you have to seriously change your gameplay.  Like, dramatically different. 

1 hour ago, Mroz4k said:

 

I struggled with responding to that without picking a fight.

It really comes down to how you play. I dont do vegetarian runs, that said I do a lot of very early exploration, I meta the crap out of a game, usually. By the day 50, I would have over 90% of the world visited. Simply so that I can run by, collect things like skill books, and make the most use of them. I dont hunt or scavenge animals that much in the first 50 - 75 days of the game because I often live on the bits and pieces I find while exploring. I do occasionally harvest the meat of the pre-determined carcasses to boost my intake on the go.

Really not a good idea to presume everyone plays the game exactly the same, especially here on the forums. Many people here have been perfecting their unique art of survival in this game for years, and forums are a perfect place to perfect one´s craft, so many talented and creative people round here. 

What I think most people dont realize is that it is often not a good idea to harvest everything in a carcass. Sure, the idea in survival would be "waste nothing" but especially once you settle in, you have sooo much food for consumption.

At your base.

The point was that by leaving the cattails around the world and not collecting them makes them a perfect resource-to-grab when you are out of options. Inventory space is limited. If you are out of your base on a travel to a distant region, you might have a plan on how much calories it will take - but I reccon most people dont take all the food they will need for their whole trip. Even still, there are variables that change. You can be delayed by a long blizzard, and suddenly your calorie reserves start dwindling. Choosing an alternate path that has cattails in a way to get that little bit of boost just might be what you need. I believe the way cattails consumption works is on purpose to make them annoying to eat. The calorie intake is low, if you could eat more of them with a single click, it would make them more convinient food to eat. The fact that the calorie intake was on the low side would then be kind of irrelevant. 

I very rarely "throw food away" in the game. I quite often just go hunting whenever my reserves become dwindling. Common mistake people do that contributes to the early onset of "game becoming repetitive" is because they hunt when they dont have to. It leads to having an overabundance of pelts, guts and meat from hunting when in fact you could have been doing other things - setting up outposts, supply caches, or just going for a hike for the sake of it. When you hunt only if neccesary, you are likely going to enjoy the game longer because there becomes time when you absolutely have to go hunting again. 

Well when you play basic levels sit makes sense I guess.  Advanced levels have to adapt much better though. 

1 hour ago, LumiStylesTTV said:

It's called a challenge and it's for fun? But yes, treat it  seriously like it's not just a game.  Besides you don't need to grab every little thing, when you can fully loot caves, fishing huts and ruined buildings. But seems as though you missed the point. Ah well.

No i got the point. The point is just nonsensical is all. It’s survival. If you take just ONE thing from a house then it’s very blatantly simple- you take the one thing you need the most at that time depending on your survival requirements. 
  I mean...  really.  You are trying to create a dilemma when there isn’t one because it’s Basic...Fundamental....Survival.... strategy. 

Sorry but that makes no sense. All items are necessary. It’s like saying “if you could only have food, fire, water or shelter” which would it be. 
 It’s survival. There are multiple aspects. 

What tests would those be exactly. How would I test for what is causing problems exactly. 

3 hours ago, Stinky socks said:

It is good practice to backup your save file, which doesn't help much after the fact. Have you been overclocking? That is usually the number one cause for corruption issues, unless something is going bad. 

Not sure how I would backup my save file and I wouldn’t do it anyway as I am strictly a purist for hardcore permadeath.  I don’t get the convenience of having a backup IRL. 

On 5/7/2021 at 10:53 AM, Mroz4k said:

Oh, interesting topic. 

Ive thought about the 2nd and 3rd option before. 2nd one could be great if done properly, 3rd one I understand why its not an issue. But, it could be combined with an idea I have for the 2nd option.

1. I dont think this is neccesary, or even wanted. Having to click that button a few extra times for some actions just brings player involvement. Take that away, many actions in the game woudl become about stacking the action and making it automatic. In a bit, you would barely even play the game. Sometimes, inconvinient and annoying = good for the game.

2. This one I agree with but its difficult. For starters, wheel has actions that everyone can do - such as building a snow shelther. However, it also inputs items into the wheel based on what is in your inventory. Therefore, you cant really "preset" it in a meanigful way. I guess it could work if there were player customization options where you would tell the game to preferably put a specific item into a specific slot. That would be awesome quality of life change.

3. Yea, I get this point. Problem comes when your bow is really low on condition and SHTF. If you have to pull a bow out quickly and then land two, three arrow shots, it would be really unfortunate if your bow broke after the first arrow was shot. And it can happen. But, if that would be an okay thing for you, I believe the game would greatly benefit from player individual customizations, aka you decide if you want the quick button to pull out highest quality bow, lowest quality bow, or for example lastly equipped bow. But Im not sure thats a viable thing for the game code. Not a developer, I dont understand it at all. 

4. Again, not a fan. Cattails eaten by each piece on its own is annoying, but I find that to be purposedful. Cattails are seen by the community as the greatest foodsource outside animals - despite the game indicating that they are meant to be "last case scenario before starving". They are light, but their calorie value to weight is actually pretty incredible. Thus their main disadvantage is that eating them is annoying. I love that about the game. Personally, I treat Cattails the way they were designed to be treated. I dont even collect them, I walk round the place, and if I do run into a situation where Im going through that area again, and would lose my well fed bonus by starving before I reach the next outpost, I would grab a cattail or two to chomp down on to keep the starvation at bay. Course, I get it, Interloper = cattails important. I play customs that are more between Voyageur and Pilgrim, but with a realistic settings. Aka recovery of health lasts several days.

Why would you even bother with cattails on voyager or even stalker? If you are losing your well fed bonus in those levels to the point you need cattails you are doing something woefully wrong. You should be throwing food away because you can’t even carry it all in those levels.  I honestly don’t see why you would even bother with cattails or teas. 

Update- looks like a corrupted save file as my other characters are operating normally. 
  I thought the save files are not local on the computer correct (to ensure permadeath), so no way to recover or repair the save file?  pretty crappy demise for a 400 day loper run. 

  All of the sudden my game crashes on PC playing a 400 day vanilla interloper character. A little loading box appears out of no where for less than 1 second- it has the long dark hatchet symbol and says “long dark unity 2019” or something (it’s so fast I can’t see it really) and has a progress bar but in a flash the game just crashes and my desktop appears. 
  Happens at seemingly random times about 2-15 minutes into gameplay by it also frequently happens when a save game screen comes up such as when entering a building. Game is Unplayable now. 

49 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I'd also like the cooking list to put the lowest condition raw meat in the inventory at the top (or left if cooking without a pot although it's more common to use the "place" method when cooking without a pot).  I would also like it asort the pieces by weight in this list so that pieces of meat that are the same size and the same condition  are more easily found together to cook at the same time.  If I wind up cooking a "fraction" piece from a bear harvest, I'd like to be able to more quickly find a matching fraction piece without having to scroll through a bunch of full-sized pieces in order to keep my cooking times for both "burners" on the fire equal.

you can already do all that. 

Here are things that REALLY do need to be implemented to improve gameplay via better interface mechanism.  Just a matter of making tasks more efficient to complete without changing anything as far as game time or survival challenge- strictly interfacing. 
 1. Make more actions if not all actions able to be “stacked”.  For example you can prepare multiple tea ingredients or arrows at once but you can only sharpen once at a time or prepare one tinder at a time.  All actions should be stackable.
2. Make the inventory wheel fully customizable so any item can be added at any location on the wheel. Same for action buttons on game pad- make them customizable. 
3. When carrying multiple bows, the action button to draw a bow should default to the LOWEST condition bow, not the highest. Similar to how it works for arrows and sewing kits for example. if there is just one improvement to make I’d prefer this one the most. 
4. Be able to eat multiple cattails at once (accounting for additional time of course).

  just some things to improve the interface without changing the gameplay survival mechanics 

I just forged one. Faster than looking for one. 

I’ve gone up there every run and never found anything (interloper, maybe the lower levels are different)

2 hours ago, Gracia_WolfSlayer said:

That super sucks dude.

Though, IMO, I wouldn't call either of those cases you mentioned a "glitch";  you were going somewhere the player wasn't designed to be able to to go, and got stuck. Crappy, but eh...

You are supposed to go wherever you want within the bounds of the map and if you try to go beyond bounds it simply should be impossible.... or an obvious drop off to certain death. But climbing a rock pile in the middle of the map- uh yeah- you should be able to cross it 

45 minutes ago, peteloud said:

That's the main reason I backup my saves.

Ah don’t kid yourself. Save scumming to “protect” against incredibly rare glitches like that is just a rationalization to simply prevent the permadeath. that’s really the “main” reason people do it. protecting against glitches is just the excuse. be honest man.  Save scumming completely ruins the entire tension the game is designed to create.  it’s a whole different game- way , way, way easier- when you don’t have to worry about dying. 

  I was just trying to bring attention to the developers of the issue. 

 Love the game but a little perturbed my 300+day ATDS character was lost on a glitch in BI at the deer carcass under the stone arch between the lookout tower and radio tower. I got stuck trying to crawl under the fallen tree and while trying to free myself my character sprained an ankle saving his position and there was no way to get out of the situation despite multiple reload attempts due to the saving after injury. 
  Last year I lost a 700 day interloper character the same way in PV goating over rocks when the character got stuck and again got an injury saving his position permanently.

  if I am going to lose a character, especially with that much time and effort invested, I would Much prefer a surprise wolf attack than a glitch.  Just saying.