TonyInPleasantValley

Been playing on Steam all morning, East Coast US, no update yet. M-U-S-T H-A-V-E P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E...lol I am also stuck indoors with a white out ongoing...so hopefully Hinterland will clear up the weather with the update 😝

@hozz1235How long before the paint fades away? When I read that it fades long ago when spray paint was added, I decided not to bother. Permanent marking would have been great! I have dozens of cans that I wouldn't mind putting to some use...thought about using it to jazz up some of my homes, lol.

I think if you have fewer than 5 it is simple to drop them, but yeah if you have 20 it is about 3 clicks to drop one. I don't drop them extremely close to each other so I don't need as many and I don't get bored. Also, I might take multiple passes to get a trail marked. For instance, if I am going from TWM to Carter Dam, on the way out I drop a few starting at Draft Dodger's cabin in the woods to the creek, pretty far apart but trying to do it in as much of a line as possible (could be straight or curved). On the way back, drop more in between the ones before. Repeat the next time. This way it is quick and not tedious and builds up over time. Also if things do disappear, having multiple passes seems to keep the bread crumbs there. I have been using the water ways as paths and then just bread crumb to points of interest like Draft Dodger's Cabin before the rope climb in PV up to Skeeter's Ridge. So in a sudden blizzard, I was in an area I don't spend a lot of time in, the birch forest. All I needed to do was find the ice, pick a direction, determine which way I was heading, and then find the bread crumbs to get out of the weather. Saved my bacon on more than one occasion!!

Thanks! I could of sworn I got all the rose hips from Crystal loooong ago, but yesterday I noticed two bushes full of them and that is what got me thinking that maybe after almost a year in survival that they eventually return. Guess I just missed them the hundreds of times I walked by them, lol.

Anyone know if things harvested from the wild respawn? I feel like some things maybe do and some things not so much? I am talking cat tails, reishi, rose hips, maples and birch? If so, any feel for how many in game days it takes? Would seem that this stuff would regrow over time, but perhaps its not that way...curious!

So once we have mastered fire in the game, some items like the ones in the title become less useful. Does anyone else do what I do with them? So having gotten lost in blizzard, fog, etc. conditions what I started doing was making a trail with these items I no longer have much use for. So on the ice, I may put one in the middle of the water way and then at the edge, and so on and so forth until I get to a cabin or rope climb or other item of interest. This helps guide me in the game when it gets nautical out there and I would otherwise perish because I am wandering blind. A while back, I used spray paint for this but I didn't like that it would eventually fade away and that I had to carry paint around all the time. So I decided I would drop items of little use to me but that I was always able to gather to help guide me, even in normal conditions because I often was getting confused as to which rock to turn right at to get to the cave to get me to Carter Dam or the like. Wonder what others do in game to help them navigate in both good and bad weather?

Failsafe makes sense because if you are not level 5 cooking, eating that will kill ya!! Filtering options would be a dream! I would also like to select the default for actions. For instance, when I walk around I usually have knife, hatchet, and sometimes hacksaw on me. None of these I want to use when breaking up branches, I prefer to use hands and save wear on items. So if I could get a checkbox that said make this the default item to use when this action is performed, that would be awesome. Can still scroll and select something different, but I use hands 95% of the time, making it the default just makes the game flow better. Again, these are little things that would be nice to have and make the game more enjoyable. Every game has these little things you might wish were different...this is not a knock on HL! Cooking: I understand that a pot is different from the stove top, however I would never have made the interface different because it does the same thing: select the item to cook. And the pot method is superior to the stove top way, so get rid of it and use the better interface. Or not, again it is a wish list item not a bug or anything.

What are your clothes like? I have a 39C warmth and 10C wind bonus and that is with worn clothes, averaging 80-85% wear. No wind chill inside, so only the first number comes into play, I think? I have never lit a night fire in the cabin and I have been there for at least half of my 320+ nights. The only time in recent memory that I got cold while sleeping was at the summit in the cave, when I accidentally stored my long underwear in the plane the day before, prepping everything I wanted to take in one container, and not noticing I was getting a lil nakey in the process...gotten cold plenty of times outdoors, but usually indoors is solid with the clothes I am wearing. Wonder what the average temps are per region. I am sure someone has a page somewhere with that info...lol.

@hozz1235 Screen shots, sure! See below for both the cooking "issue" and the eating off the ground "issue". None of my observations are intended to be complaints, but more so nice changes that I personally would like. So in the first and second image, you see ruined rabbit on the ground, select it, and I get TWO choices. Second shot is a piece of ruined bear meat, but I took it inside the cabin and cooked it, then came and dropped it on the ground like the rabbit. I select it, and now I get a third option: to eat it. So YES I want to eat off the ground like an animal to save myself some clicks. LOLZ! After all I CAN take the ruined rabbit, then select my inventory, scroll to it, and eat it. Just a bit more "work" to get to the same state. Second set of images are on the SAME STOVE. One is the interface you get without a pot, the other is with a pot. What I like about the with a pot interface is a) it puts raw meats up front which is almost always what I am cooking, and b) it is easier to select an item vice side scrolling the items in the no pot interface. @s7mar7inThanks for the kind words. Understood on all and again I am not really complaining, just making observations and hoping one day some of these not really issues things are fixed. I think it would also make the code a lot cleaner and easier to maintain as having two methods for doing the same thing is always harder to maintain. I developed software for years, and one thing I hate is technical debt and code that isn't as concise and devoid of complexity as possible. That said, this is a game and the fate of NASA isn't hanging in the balance. BTW, I still manage to give myself food poisoning from time to time...not the devs fault, totally mine!!

Currently Voyageur...likely to bump up a level next sandbox.

They are generally not easy to find, that is for sure without saying more to spoil it. I almost always found them by surprise, just like today when I found my fifth rifle!! I was transiting again, going from region to region to update my inventory spreadsheet (yeah, I was bored) and happened to take a short cut that led me to a place I had forgotten was even in the game. There be a rifle! No ammo though...but I was happy to toss it in my sack and take it to the next stop along the way and put it in a locker. Don't give up...you will eventually find them...just make sure you look around because they can be in obscure places. Good luck!!

* I started making an inventory of the loot I have all over the Island. This lead me to think about what each item is used for and such. And now I have questions: I have about a dozen or so sewing kits, however I know you can also use fish hooks to sew. Do the fish hooks wear? If not, other than a time factor, why would I ever use anything else to repair clothes? * What do you think about certain items being ruined and having no further use? Bow, sewing kit, whetstone are examples of things I just put in a trash pile. Seems as if the game would allow us to recover something from these items, no? * Why do I have to pick up a ruined piece of meat to eat it? Seems odd... * Why are there a couple of different interfaces to cooking? I really would like to see this standardized.

I just found another "regular rifle". So I snagged it as I want to ensure I can go as deep into a run as possible. Agree Curator's is a beauty. Also was the hardest for me to locate. I searched everywhere and when I found it I was so stoked!

They are not the easiest things to find, usually stuck in some out of the way place. I went on a mission to scour all of Great Bear until I found them all. Took me months. Good luck finding them!

I went through a LOT of trouble to find Curator's and have not even shot it once! I think I will take it on my next adventure to test drive it. I liked Barb's a lot, but the weight made me go back to Vaughn's. I always walk around pretty heavy, so VR is a go to because of that. Plus I find myself always hauling stuff from one region to another quite often, so having extra kilos really helps in that regard.

The other major advantage is you are near a *ton* of loot from the crashed airplane! There are a large number of crates that you can break into scattered all around and a motherlode at the summit. So much that it will take you 5 or so trips up and down to get it all to your base, if you are so inclined. You are also very close to the OTHER crashed airplane on the way to PV which has a lot of clothes and food items (and a nasty old bear). So food, clothes, and tools are readily available nearby. I would say the other challenges are lack of some items, like scrap metal, lead, and cloth due to lack of buildings and vehicles in the area. This is easily overcome by making treks to PV and Carter Dam to bring in as much of that stuff as you can ever use. I totally agree about the view. During the aurora it is especially nice! Love just walking out on that front porch and staring into the scene, trying to figure out what I need to do next to survive or advance the game... Never gotten cold in the cabin and never light fires at night. I will have to monitor this because I don't want to freeze to death!!

So most of the meat I accumulated was to get to level 5 on a couple of skills. Only thing I have left is mending, which is usually one I finish early due to lots of scrapes with animals, but somehow this run it will end up being the last skill I get to 5, if I am so lucky. It is hard on TWM to not accumulate a lot of meat. Walk out your front door and you are almost always greeted by a wolf over near the creek, deer by fishing hut, fish galore, bunnies over past the ledge, and an occasional, periodic bear strolling right up to your camp area. Level 5 rifle, pistol, bow means you're most likely going to kill whatever you hunt. I almost always take everything, as I too am of the mind if you kill the animal you should not let it waste (though in nature, nothing really goes to waste...just gets eaten by something else). I am going to try to lay off the animals for a while, unless I see a moose, as I want to craft a cape. I usually shoot the beer, cuz I don't want to run into one when out and about...that is the only thing that gives me pause...should I leave beers alive around where I live or not...hmmm... I also have smaller piles like this at some other locations so I don't get tempted to carry meat when transiting to other regions. I find it so much safer not smelling like meat or guts!!

REALLY looking forward to the update. I sort of moved a lot of items from my base to an area more central to where I think the new region will be. All the updates sound like fun, cannot wait for the first Aurora to hit so I can explore. BTW, did you know the aurora was seen in North Carolina this week due to a freak geomagnetic storm? Sound familiar? Prepper bunkers were sorely missed, so looking forward to finding them and raiding them! Only 5 more days!

I have so much meat available on TWM that it isn't funny. Want to make a few more rock cache's to store it and get it out of site. Trying to decide if I stop killing wolves and beer on TWM until I work through the 100's of kilos of meat I have laying outside my cabin.

I can't believe I did this AGAIN! I have not been playing TLD much lately as I got another new game I have been spending time on, but today I decided to hop on an play a bit. I'm on day 320 of this survival run, and my goal is a minimum of 365 days in survival. Anyhow, my wife is playing with the dog upstairs, there is a loud noise, I go investigate. Dog is having the zoomies, so I decide to walk her. Forgot I was playing...get home from the walk, walk down to see my character literally dying of thirst! Forgot to hit ESC or exit survival, standing in the cabin above Crystal, slowly wasting away! So glad the dog wasn't interested in a long walk or I would have likely been crying in my beer over my dumbness. This run has been a lot of fun, I have learned a lot even though I have been playing since near the beginning. Today, clear and crisp day, so I gathered wood and started to gather stones for another cache. Walking on Crystal, I suddenly realize the deer are acting odd...there is a bear coming right at me! I get off the ice, onto the ledge, pull out Vaughn's and one shot that sucker! Averaging a beer kill about every 12 days now. I did note the day in my notebook so I can start tracking beer spawn rates as I am interested in how often they spawn after a kill. Will post my results some day...

Personally, I almost exclusively use Vaughn's Rifle because it is lighter weight. I try to balance my gear toward functionality, and for rifle shots, I feel like I don't need the added range or the toughness of the other two variants. Most of my shots are taken at pretty close range so that a) I hit the animal, and b) I hopefully one shot it. If not, I always try to be setup for an escape route or to be where the animal cannot get to me. The delta in weight allows me to sub in my bear skin bedroll with less of a weight hit, as an example of why I prefer VR. That roll is a life saver from time to time! I also tend to wear more combat ready clothes, to help with surviving bear and wolf attacks. I am less concerned with moose because they are rare and I usually can easily avoid them. Now with the cougar coming, all this may change for me...still need to see how that changes the game and therefore the way I play it. Anyhow, interested in hearing from those of you who play levels where you can get rifles what you use and why. Who knows, maybe I will switch one day! To be completely open, I don't think I have shot my CR yet, but I have BR and it was a really nice rifle. The regular rifle I have not shot since the variants were introduced, but I have one to "complete the collection".

That is spot on @ManicManiac! Desolate, depressing, disaster. Most regions I look forward to visiting and learning more about....FM I just always try to avoid just because of the feeling I get when I enter. Maybe it goes way back to story mode and having that giant bear stalking me in FM? Not sure what it is, but the area has no appeal to me. Much happier on Crystal Lake or PV or CH, all of which have more charm factor for me.

All of Forlorn Muskeg gets my vote for creepiest, though not sure creepy is the exact word. I just don't like ever going there for some odd reason. I have been killed there a number of times, so that might have something to do with it, but the place just has no appeal to me. I don't like all the thin ice, wolves, bears. There aren't a lot of great places to hang out. The weather is usually miserable. Bleak inlet runs a close second with all the TWs.

I think panic has killed me more in survival than just about everything else, except my own stupidity...lol

I think that keeping this blog has started to make me a better player of this game (famous last words!). I have recently done a much better job of staying alive by doing proper planning. I start with a goal, determine the best way to achieve that goal, plan for as many contingencies as I can, and then proceed. I check and double check my gear before going out, and make sure I know my route and any and all places to run to for sleep or to get away from Mr. Bear. I know that is all pretty much common sense, but seems my making mistakes and taking the time to reflect on them is helping me play smarter. For instance, was just in Blackrock and I was low on food, not out, but not comfortable with my supply. So I quickly snagged a few rabbits, a part of a wolf, and some fuel for the stove just before 2 days of blizzard weather kicked in. Had I not planned for the worst, hoped for the best, I would likely have starved in BR prison. Still not comfortable with my supply, I ended up leaving before I completed all my goals (make ammo, fix tools) but got enough done that it wasn't a complete waste of a trip from TWM. I got about 48 new rounds and a sharp knife/hatchet/saw out of the trip. Wanted more ammo, but staying longer might have been the end, so glad I got out. No rabbits or wolves were spawning, and it felt like weather was going to keep being bad. Ended up leaving in foggy conditions that I was not comfortable moving around the map in, but got lucky as timber wolves were not spawning either...