Blizzard Walker

On my Voyageur run (Day 1855) my character has all skills up to 5 except for gunsmithing - which is at level 4 just by reading books. To increase rifle and revolver skills I relied on research books in order to conserve ammunition. It was a slow grind to get mending from level 4 to level 5 but I reached level 5 around Day 800. I use fishing tackle for all repairs as I prefer to hoard sewing kits. A surplus of rabbit, deer and wolf skins plus cured guts helped advance my mending skill. I commonly repair animal hide clothing when it degrades to 90% condition. Cloth items I repair at 80% condition. I have definitely not depleted the supply of cloth on my long run despite the substantial amount of cloth I have used to repair clothes and maintain backup high value items (ear wraps, balaclavas, fisherman sweaters, wool long underwear, climbing socks). My SOP is to systematically break down every curtain, pillow, ruined bedroll, ruined clothing item, unneeded clothing item and piece of furniture that will yield cloth. Coastal Highway by itself can provide around 500 pieces of cloth on Voyageur. I have spent entire game days at Carter Dam breaking down metal furniture to harvest 5 more pieces of cloth. My cloth inventory spread over multiple bases is 1,125 pieces. I will add more cloth when I finish looting AC and get around to visiting Black Rock and Bleak Inlet. There is no need to be profligate with cloth as the normal process of periodic repair will get you to mending level 5 during an extended run. Anyone who goes beyond 500 days is likely to achieve mending 5.

Any chance the Hinterland on line store will re-open so I can purchase a TLD mug? I have only played since March 2020 and missed my prior opportunity to purchase one.

I have had no success with car radios during aurora events. Now I will give it another try and wait longer for the music to start.

Never engage a bear in a fair fight. I have found every bear route has at least one location where you can shoot from safety, a spot inaccessible to the bear. The trick is to learn where they are. Once shot they trash around and bleed out at the base of your perch. If your safe shooting spot is close to a base, like CH Fishing cabins or PV Farmhouse, you can stash impressive quantities of meat, guts and hides.

Wandering towards the Bear Cave east of Crystal Lake led to me finding the missing bear. He just does not travel to Crystal Lake any more. Problem solved.

piddy3825, Thanks for that suggestion. I have left TWM to transfer loot to the PV Abandoned Preppers Cache. I think I spent the night there during a storm. Since I need to transfer some more items to the PV APC, I'll take your suggestion and spend a day outside TWM. When I return to the Mountaineers Hut I'll report if the Crystal Lake bear returns. Two in game days ago I did spot the bear that wanders along the creek that empties into Crystal Lake; that tells me there are still some bears in the region.

Pencil, I am accustomed to certain areas during a run not spawning a bear. On my Voyageur run I have never had a bear on Mystery Lake or at Trappers Cabin. As far as the Crystal Lake Bear is concerned, I have seen it regularly visiting the eastern end of the Lake near the fishing cut. Kill the bear and expect it back in 16 days like clockwork. I imagine the two other bears that spawn in TWM are in their usual haunts but I have not searched them out. What I find odd is that I expect a bear that is spawning during a current run to continue to spawn as long as the my current run continues. I am going on 40 days without the bear returning to Crystal Lake.

Thank you - I will wait till 40 days pass at Crystal Lake. If no bear by then I will reach out to support.

I use the Mountaineer's Hut in TWM as a long term base. The bear that visits the eastern (fishing hut) end of Crystal Lake is a regular nightly visitor. My character returned to Crystal Lake after spending 400+ days in other regions. On a previous visit I regularly hunted the bear from the fishing hut and waited for it to respond before hunting it again. On this trip to Crystal Lake the wolves, deer and rabbits are all present but no bear. On Voyageur I expect the bear to respawn, if killed, every 16-17 days. After spending 25 days at Crystal Lake I am wondering if the bear will ever return. I prefer to travel through Echo Ravine only after I hunt and kill the Crystal Lake bear.....thus I wait and fish. Has anyone else experienced an instance where a reliable bear spawn location goes dormant?

hozz1235, I returned to TWM and settled in at hut on the lake after a 400 visit to other regions to assemble resources and scour the land for birch saplings. Upon returning to TWM I immediately repaired stashed clothing. Within a day I developed a new appreciation of the Mountaineer's hut on the lake. The fishing hut provides sufficient food and allows me to stock up on lamp oil. Wolves are ever present on the lake but are easy to avoid. Wood is abundant and is conveniently located behind the hut, another predator free area. The bear visits the lake at predictable times and can be ignored if one stays around the hut. Hunting the bear from the fishing hut is fairly simple, albeit not as simple as at the CH Fishing Cabins' roadside cliff. Rabbits are conveniently available behind the Mountaineer's hut as well. Since the wolves and bear can be easily avoided I am going to see how long I can thrive at this location without once shooting the bow, revolver or rifle. Stocking up on cloth and metal is not too difficult if you relay it from the PV Farmhouse to Draft Dodgers-Skeeters Ridge-Abandoned Preppers. Using only animal based clothing should help to minimize cloth wasteage.

By far Coastal Highway is my favorite region. I find it is the easiest region to traverse when I want to avoid wolf and bear encounters. Sight distance over the ice is superb. Fishing huts provide safe stopping points when traveling. I cache each hut with fuel for approximately 12 hours - vastly reducing the threat posed by blizzards. Killing the bear from the safety of the cliff overlooking the Fishing Camp cabins could not be easier. It is probably the region with the most cloth; I have accumulated 570 pieces by harvesting all curtains, pillows, towels, furniture and excess clothing. Fishing huts provide food, lamp fuel and a place to beat down cabin fever risk. Beach combing offers the prospect of finding the birch saplings which I view as the greatest limiting factor in the game. My preference for Coastal Highway does not include the Quonset Hut and its surrounding structures. I cannot think of many areas so prone to surprise wolf and bear attacks. I spent just enough time to load up and remove valuable loot. Hundreds of days later I returned only to harvest cloth and metal. Once the last couch and metal shelf is broken down I will avoid this area entirely.

Thanks for all the responses everyone. The link to Osman's 10 year run on Loper is truly impressive. Should I last that long on Voyageur I will make it a point to harvest every Cattail, Old Mans Beard, Rose Hip and Reishi Mushroom in order to in every region so that charcoal mapping shows none remaining at all.

At 1500+ days on Voyageur I have settled into a routine of systematically looting/harvesting resources and concentrating them at key locations. These are ML Camp Office, ML Trappers, Ravine Cave, PV Farmhouse, PV T. Crossing, CH Fishing Village and TWM Mountaineer's Hut. Apart from more lightly provisioned way points between regions I don't expect to ever return to 90% of the terrain I explored as part of the initial looting/harvesting. By far the easiest spot to survive, assuming your goal is just to survive, is the Fishing Village cabins in Coastal Highway. Wood is reasonably abundant even after you break up all the pallets. The nearby fishing hut provides fish and oil. With Fishing skill 5 fishing gear just does not break. Bears walking through camp can be a hazard but the inaccessible cliff shelf just across the road is the easiest spot I have ever used to hunt bear. One arrow is enough to kill the bear. It walks right under the cliff; if it sees you the wounded bear will simply thrash around at the base of the cliff till it bleeds out. Similarly, the same cliff makes it easy to lure in and ambush the wolf that patrols the dock with raw meat and stones. Clearing both the wolf and bear allows 5-7 days of predator free beach combing in the stretch of coast from the mouth of Bear Creek to the far end of Jackrabbit Island. Killing the respawned Bear Creek bear every 15-17 days provides abundant food and a surplus of bear hides. The hacksaw and the tools to repair the hacksaw only require metal. Once CH metal is consumed it is a short run to the Carter Dam where 100+ pieces of metal can be harvested. Relying on the hacksaw greatly reduces knife and hatchet wear. Staying put at the CH Fishing Village and hunting only the twice monthly bear might reduce arrow loss to one per month. Since I have 50 arrows and 156 arrow shafts I should only run out of arrows in 6,180 days. Beach combing should extend that period by finding birch saplings. The 400 revolver and rifle rounds I set aside, if used only for one shot bear kills, could take me another 6,000 days. Of all regions CH may have the most available cloth as I have set aside 300 pieces of cloth just in that region. I don't see any reason a Long Dark character, at least on Voyageur, could not live 10,000 days unless bad luck, mistakes or boredom ends the run.

That is a lot of lamp oil hozz1235. Do you leave a lantern lit continuously as a night light? I came in at 2,226 pounds. I found I have harvested 5 times that amount in combined rabbit, deer, wolf, bear and moose meat.

My choice is the Mag Lens. Most of my fires are free Mag Lens fires; I commonly wait for for a sunny day before boiling 10 liters or more of water. Similarly I set aside raw meat until I can make a Mag Lens fire to cook meat. Since I play on Voyageur with high end clothing its not essential to make fires to just stay warm. Match use goes way down. Presently I have over 1000 matches stashed away at various bases. My second choice is the bow. Although I have both a revolver and rifle, my bow is what I use for hunting deer/moose/bear and for suppressing wolves. I have gone over 200 days in my current run without shooting the revolver or rifle. Using the bow almost exclusively means I can hoard ammunition - almost 300 total rounds are stashed away at bases.

With the exception of the area around Cloudtop Falls, HRV is the one region where I feel compelled to have a lit torch constantly in hand or in hand ready to light. I liken walking around its jumbled terrain to driving on an endlessly winding road with little or no sight distance. I find myself constantly on the alert for wolves over the next hummock. My exploration forays are short and seldom take me too far from known cave locations. So far I have navigated the westerly ice cave, the one without the wolf, and the area west of Many Falls Vista and south of Hushed River.....about one third of the total map. Feeding my character is not proving to be a problem. The Cave northeast of Stairsteps Lake is proving to be a secure base. Sticks, rose hips, mushrooms and Old Man's Beard are all abundant but I already had plenty stashed away throughout Great Bear. I intend to explore the rest of HRV slowly but surely in search of three resources, those being birch saplings, revolver ammunition and rifle ammunition. Birch saplings are particularly scarce as likely locations are proving barren of saplings. I have added perhaps 7 revolver rounds and 1 rifle round. In terms of clothes I have found two more Fisherman's Sweaters and another wool ear wrap but little else to "make the juice worth the squeeze".

I believe those arrows are lost along with the despawned Moose. On my way to Archery 5 I shot at rabbits and made arrows as a way to boost that skill. That said, if you are going to play at any level other than Pilgrim, nothing beats just honing your skills than taking shots at deer and wolves. Even on Pilgrim you can practice on wolves by reaching Archery 5, crouching and luring wolves closer with stones.

Typically I repair at 80% for clothing items requiring cloth or leather. If I am at a location with an abundance of cured rabbit, deer and wolf pelts I may mend at 90%. I end up with a surplus of wolf pelts at my main bases. Most short trips are thus made wearing two wolf coats versus the Bear Coat/Expedition combo I use for longer treks.

I would agree. My recollection is that I have piles of coal at each end of that transition cave.....having found much more than I needed.

I have used snow shelters in regions with few shelters, think Forlorn Muskeg. Has anyone had any experience in terms of their effectiveness in deterring wolves and bears? Particularly I am wondering if either can detect a character in a snow shelter. If pursued by a wolf will it lose interest when the character enters the snow shelter? Has anyone used a snow shelter as a means of using 3 smell bars to attract wolves into range for a bow, revolver or rifle shot?

Collecting all the cloth in Coastal Highway has become a minor quest in my Voyageur run. I currently have stockpiled 430 pieces of cloth at the Fishing Village cabin I use as a base. Before I am done I will likely top 450 pieces of cloth. I harvested all clothing I did not need, broke down all furniture that yielded cloth and wood and cut up every old bedroll or pillow found within the various trailers. A similar task would be to harvest all the metal at the Carter Hydro Dam.

hozz1235, excellent idea. I suggesting adding perhaps 2-4 pieces of cloth and a piece of cured leather for emergency repairs.

hozz1235, a 2400+ run is amazing. If a player braves the timber wolves to navigate to either ammunition work bench the only limiting factors become lead at cast bullets and sulfur/stump remover for making gunpowder. So far I have not visited either ammunition work bench. Car batteries are abundant throughout Great Bear Island. I have not done the math but the 6 sulfur and 9 stump removers in my inventory should produce a substantial amount of gunpowder. My guess is that you will run out of gunpowder before running out of lead for bullets. Until I start using the ammunition work bench I am hunting exclusively with the bow to conserve revolver and rifle rounds. Employing the best shoot from safety spots for bear hunting further limits bow shots for anyone aiming towards a very long (albeit less than exciting) run. I have not harvested all the birch saplings in all regions but the 144 shafts in reserve plus 40 intact arrows should last 1300 more days assuming one arrow breaks per week. Since my character is presently set up in Coastal Highway, I am trying my hand at finding saplings by beachcombing. So far I have found one maple sapling.

After 1300 days on Voyageur I came across one cattail along the shore of Mystery Lake between the camp office and first fishing hut. It led me to believe they may respawn but now I am inclined to think that I somehow managed to overlook that one.

I first played on Pilgrim for perhaps 200 game days to learn the basic mechanics of the game. On occasion I will revert to my Pilgrim character to facilitate exploring unknown regions or test dangerous locations - my first trip across the Ravine's single rail bridge for example. My Voyageur run is approaching 1,400 days. My goal is 3,000 days or more on Voyageur. A secondary goal is to thoroughly learn the maps for all regions. Survival is rarely a concern after assembling high end clothes along with abundant tools, ammunition, arrows and food. Voyageur at times affords an experienced player an almost absurd margin for error - I have over 1,100 matches stashed at various bases. Presently I am working on building well stocked bases including spare sets of clothes in each region. In that endeavor I find that Cooking Skill 5 is Hinterland's greatest gift to the casual survivor. My meat stockpile at Trapper's is over 1000 days old. At some point I will provide my Voyageur character a comfortable retirement location, most likely at TWM's Crystal Lake, and the repeat the whole process on Stalker. Its unlikely I will ever play on Interloper as I like the rifle and revolver too much.