Cyclone35

This idea was something I was thinking about to add additional foraging to the game. Still a work in progress so just hear me out. We are well aware that maple trees can be tapped to collect sweet sap and then boiled to create maple syrup. What if this was a sort of mechanic in the game. You would find a maple tree and attach a tapper to it, you can place a pot or recycled can below the tapper then harvest the sap from the tree. This would take time, so lets say you can come back later to check how much sap you collected. Afterwards you can use a campfire to boil the sap in order to create maple syrup. This would yield the same amount of calories as a normal bottle of maple syrup. The pros to this method is that it yields a large quantity of calories to consume, the cons is that its takes time to do compared to harvesting cat tails and acorns.

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This suggestion was posted awhile ago, but your definitely right about adding more atmospheric lighting. I did notice since the new update that certain indoor areas like the Hydro Dam got a lot darker. No doubt they want lighting to be more realistic and showcase that rooms without windows don't illuminate an area. Still, its pretty annoying to have so many dark locations without a proper light source to explore them.

Sure you could create multiple campfire's, but I was thinking of a solution that doesn't require you to waste materials. Sticks are plentiful after all.

I had a interesting thought about using a campfire to cook food and multitask. When a kill an animal and stock up on 10+ pieces of meat, it can become a hassle to cook it all without a large oven with 6 slots. If your in a region like Hush River Valley or Timberwolf Mountain, you only have access to 2 slots with a campfire. What if you can add additional slots to a campfire. The idea is that campers use sticks to hold meat over a fire. Lets say there's an option to add sticks to a campfire to create more slots to cook with. This would only apply to meat and fish. You can still use to 2 rocks to cook everything else, but you now have more slots for preparing meat and fish. You can't use the stick slots to cook cans, tea, or boil water. Unless the pot has a hook or handle to latch on too, but I highly doubt that. This idea would make cooking meat & fish less tedious and allow you to be more strategic about what you cook.

There is a specific type of pistol used for hunting. Its not common in Canada, but that's what makes it unique. The handgun features similar characteristics to a rifle, except its smaller has limitations. Pros: - Lighter option compared to a rifle - Has a scope or better sight to improve accuracy - Fire's more powerful shots compared to a revolver - It makes a lot of noise, useful for scaring wildlife. - Uses rifle ammo instead, more damage and eliminates the need to carry around revolver ammo. Cons: - Heavier than a revolver - Can only fire 1 shot before reloading, not useful if you miss and a carnivore is still running towards you. - Can't use revolver ammo, it requires rifle ammo. - Not as strong as a rifle itself. - If the gun can carry more bullets, the strong recoil makes it hard to steady your next shot.

I can see this as a possibility. You do a lot of walking in-game, so your feet would wear out overtime. I suspect when you sleep in a bed the character takes off their shoes. Also, some caves involve walking across small puddles of ice cold water with causes your shoes and socks to get wet and freeze. But trench foot would be a long term affliction that would take a while before it kicks in. In addition, I feel this would be suitable for stalker/interloper.

What about aged cheese, the kind of cheese you find in thick plastic wraps. Sure it can become spoiled after some time, but generally speaking some cheese can even stay edible for almost 10 years (Don't eat 10 year old cheese, it smells and is not good for you). On the topic of scurvy & eating a balance diet, TLD doesn't really have much in terms of dairy products. So adding item in the dairy food group would be beneficial and realistic.

I think lockpicking can be a secondary option to opening locks from car trunks and lockers. The benefit is that lockpicks are lighter, giving you a bit more space compared to carrying a prybar. You can also use scrap metal at a workbench or furnace to make your own. Downside is that it takes slightly longer to pick a lock compared to prying it open. In addition, lockpicks are fragile tools that can break easily if used incorrectly or excessively. There could be a minigame that involves carefully turning the lock, if you go to fast the pick will break. If your playing on a controller, it can vibrate to increase the intensity. The vibration gets worse if when you move to quickly.

I agree, having to go through that tedious trek becomes annoying. Being able to unlock a shortcut back up would be helpful. And I'm not just talking about the cannery, I'm sure there are other key locations I would like a shortcut back too.

You see a lot of cars & trucks out in the world, sometimes it may get a bit repetitive to see the same vehicle over & over. I do like the addition of being able to enter planes & helicopters in the dlc. But I was wondering if there would be some variants to the types of vehicles located around great bear. 1 idea that came to mind is a RV located somewhere in the wilderness. The RV is much larger than a normal car, meaning it has potential to act as a proper shelter from weather. You can enter the front like every other vehicle, but you can also see a door on the side of the RV that you can enter to find supplies and a bed. Its a tight space so there's not much room to store supplies. But it also helps with world building, knowing that some people prpbably don't own a house and live in an RV. Or it also establishes that your not the only outsider across great bear.

So after you kill a large animal, you can harvest them for meat and resources. The main issue present is that trying to harvest the animal out in the open can be quite dangerous. The big obstacles are bad weather and hungry predators jumping at you when you least expect it. Sure you could build a fire to keep warm and scare away wolves/bears. However, expert survivors usually find a safe place to harvest their catch. In Wintermute chapter 3, the player can carry a survivor on their back. What if the player can pick up the animal and carry it to a different location. That way the player can take their catch to a safer location to make the most out of their harvest. There will be some down sides to this. 1. Large animals like bears or moose will be too large to carry. Only deer and wolves (also cougar depending on its size in game) are small enough for a normal human to carry themselves. 2. Due to their weight, trying to carry an animal will prevent the player from using items in their inventory. They have to place the animal on the ground in order to interact with objects and pull out a weapon to defend themselves. In addition, carrying a heavy animal will reduce your base movement speed and prevent you from sprinting. 3. The scent of a large animal will attract predators. The scent bar will be at 3 notches, meaning you have to be careful if a wolf or bear are in the area. 4. You cannot carry the animal inside a manmade shelter. The only exceptions are cave shelters found throughout the map. Also to avoid complicating the system, lets just say you can't carry an animal to another region or a transition area. 5. Animal carcass that have been ravaged cannot be picked up.

Remember, game development is hard work. Hinterland isn't a AAA studio with a lot of resources and hundreds of staff members. There an independent indie studio that work on 1 game. We all just have to be patient, they'll announce an update when there ready.

I've been checking out this forum for a while now, and I figured its probably a good time to introduce myself. So hi, you can call me Cyclone. I'm a Canadian developer that has made a couple of small games in the past, and I currently work full time in the gaming industry. I enjoy studying game design and documenting some good ideas. My strengths are usually level design when it comes to structure, mapping, grey-blocking ,environmental storytelling, etc. Things I need to improve on are coding, never been much of a programmer. I'm your guy when it comes to questions about game design. I actually got TLD on 2 different platforms. the first was on Nintendo switch since it was on sale at the time, and the second was on PC for free on Epic Games after I got a stronger computer. I enjoy the approach to survival, most games like Raft or Terraria don't exactly sell you on survival being the main focus. But every now and then I pop back into the game to see how long I'll last and check out any new content. The game itself as a whole is great, but there's always room for improvement. If I ever come up with any new and interesting ideas, I make sure to post them in the wish list section. You might find some that I've already written down. I don't really post an idea until I know it will fit the game's design philosophy. I play a mix of different genres. I tend to avoid strategy & shooter games since they don't interest me that much. I prefer action/adventure games, and also roguelikes. I can get invested in a survival game if it has an excellent core game loop. However, I don't tend to stick with the same game for a long period of time. So yeah, that's all I can share (for now). Looking forward to chatting with some of you about other topics.

So rabbits in TLD have a very simple behavior when you find them. They wander a small area, and flee when they sense danger. There's nothing wrong with it, but I always get the feeling like there's something missing. Realistically, rabbits make their own burrows in the dirt/snow to avoid predators and seek shelter from bad weather. It would make sense to find a rabbit burrow out in the wilderness. It can improve the behavior and add some new elements to hunting rabbits. 1. When a rabbit flees, its first instinct is to run back to its burrow. So gameplay wise, if there's a burrow nearby, the rabbit(s) will flee to avoid you. You won't be able to catch them when they enter the burrow, your just going to have to distance yourself and wait a little for them to come back out. If there is no burrow in the area, then the rabbits will follow the original behavior. 1 upside to this feature is it reduces the risk of a wolf showing up and devouring all the rabbits, leaving you with nothing to hunt. Its mighty annoying when 1 wolf is somewhere their not suppose to be and eat an entire livestock of rabbits. 2. During my playthrough, I rarely play around with snares. Its usually easier to catch them myself, and it's a bit off to just leave a snare in an open space and expect a rabbit to get caught by them. What if the player can deploy a snare next to a rabbit burrow. It would make the tool more reliable. If a rabbit flees to its burrow, you can place a snare down by the entrance and catch yourself a easy meal. What do you think?

I'm sure we are all aware that the mending skill is not really balance in terms of progression and trying to get to lvl 5. Players have gotten the hang of avoiding danger, so their clothing rarely gets damage, not to mention how easy it is to repair your clothing. In addition, players don't feel the need to repair clothing they don't plan on wearing, your not going to enter someone's house and repair a set of sports socks you don't need. If you want to encourage players to dedicate time towards improving their mending skill, there needs to be some design changes to the system. Here are some ideas that came to mind, feel free to share some more down below. 1. XP & skill books: The amount of XP given for repairing clothes and reading skill books is too low. Its hard enough to get to lvl 2 midway through your playthrough without a skill book. To put it simply, we should acquire more XP at the start compared to what we get now. As for skill books, why exactly does it not immediately raise you to lvl 2? Meanwhile a book about fishing and revolver training gets you right up to lvl 2. The books should give you more XP since its so hard to lvl up. 2. Crafting Clothing: When you craft arrows at a workbench, it gives you XP towards archery. Wouldn't it make sense to give you mending XP when you craft clothing from animal pelts? You use a sewing kit to repair your clothing, but you also use it to craft animal clothing. Not just anyone can craft clothing on their own without practice and experience. A persons ability to craft clothing should contribute to your mending skill. 3. Repair Complexity: Each piece of clothing you repair has different values in terms of time, condition restored, and required resources (wool scarf: 30 min/1 cloth/+60% vs mariners pea coat: 2 hours/2 cloth/+30%). When you try to repair more complicated clothing, it should reward you with more XP compared to repairing weaker clothing that's easier to mend. These changes are designed to make it more efficient to increase your mending skill, without overly complicating the main system.

There's a new bird being added to the game that you can hunt. Maybe as a addon, you can find their nests. Or maybe their can be bird houses scattered around the map that have a small chance to find eggs.

I like the idea of TLD community having different save files that share a hidden connection with other players. Kind of similar to Subnautica's mechanic with leaving "time capsule's" for people to find and acquire random items left behind by other players. Perhaps this could play a role in TLD. The player would find an item called the "survivors cache". With it, they can put any item in their inventory into the cache and then bury it for other players to find. You can only bury the cache in snow, you won't be able to bury it on boulders, ice, roads, or in caves. Once you die, that cache gets saved and will show up in a random players save file for them to find. There would be some sort of signifier like a small flag sticking out of the snow for the other player to dig up. The survivor's cache would have a weight limit to prevent players from storing too many items, this will help balance the game to ensure players don't get a overload of top tier items early or late game. In addition, players can leave behind written messages to read. You can write anything in these messages (tips, your story, a joke, encouragement, etc.).

So after some thinking, I thought I'd share a few more suggestions for food variants that would fit the base game. 1. Chicken Noodle Soup: Commonly found in a can, CNS is a new stew you can find and eat. Its similar to tomato soup, except it has a slight higher calorie intake. You can cook the soup over a fire to get the warming up perk, but what makes CNS different then the other can foods is its ability to restore condition. Most people consume CNS when they get sick, so it would make sense that CNS offers some healing properties. We'll say it can restore an additional 5% of your health, that way birch bark tea is still the superior option towards healing yourself. 2. Popcorn: Prepared in sealed packages, popcorn is another snack that can be found and prepared over a campfire. Due to the popcorn being stored in a sealed package, its relatively light to carry. However, you can't eat it directly, you'll need a lit campfire, and a container to prepare the popcorn. Due to the salty flavor, it will reduce your hydration, but it will be a decent snack to cook up. If its too difficult to implement, we can just say the player can find a bag filled with prepared popcorn to consume (similar to ketchup chips). 3. Smores: 1 of the best snacks to have while camping is a smore. Ideally the only item you need to cook is the marshmallow. The cracker and chocolate just come with the package. In terms of roasting the marshmallow, you wouldn't be able to follow the standard cooking procedure. Instead, there will be a short minigame where the player must rotate the marshmallow accordingly to properly roast it (this can follow the same control scheme as unlocking a safe combination). If you burn the marshmallow, you'll have to try again with another marshmallow. But if you run out, you won't be able to eat any smores. 4. Canned Beer: Not exactly food, but I thought I'd share some thoughts about it. Beer is a alcoholic drink that some campers would take with them on trips. There relatively the same size as other soda drinks. 1 major downside to consuming beer is it grants the player the tipsy affliction for a short time. The affliction will make the player have a less steady aim with weapons, and they are unable to walk in a straight line. The affliction gets worse and lasts longer if you consume more than 1. Since your game is built on the concept of everything having consequences, I figured finding general soda cans was a bit generous for the player. If we want to add a bit more challenge and consequence, we can have beer cans appear in game. Since your game is rated T, its probably not the best idea to include alcohol. But it may help spread a message that alcohol is not good for you.

So it has been suggested before about adding a mountain goat, but I thought I'd share my thoughts on how this would make a great addition to the game. - You wouldn't find these goats in the lower part of great bear where civilization is located (Costal Highway, Pleasant valley). You would only find a mountain goat in a region that's higher up with fewer shelters (Timberwolf Mountain, Ash Canyon, Hushed River Valley). - If you get too close or startle the animal, it will charge at you at full speed. We'll say the impact is the same as getting hit by a timber wolf. After it hits you, it flees to distance itself. A goat attacking you is more of a defensive tactic, its not a carnivore. - Goats are roughly as big as a deer, so the amount of meat & guts you harvest is practically the same. - The hide of a goat can make a unique coat that offers great warmth and protection from strong winds and blizzards. However, due to the material being softer than a wolf or bear, it doesn't provide much protection from physical harm. Its also not very sturdy, a wolf or bear can tear through it more easily compared to other clothing. We'll say its slightly warmer and lighter than a wolfskin coat, but its not as sturdy and protective as one. If anyone else has any other suggestions, feel free to comment down below

For a game that takes place in a Canadian winter, I'm surprise this specific hat isn't in the game. It would be a top tier item that's rare to find. Its better and more sturdy than a wool toque. It would technically be equal to a rabbit skin hat.

There are multiple food options to acquire in-game, but I figured there could be more added to include more variety and strategy towards survival and planning. Below I listed some ideas for new types of food that would make a great addition to the game. Disclaimer: I'm aware there are mods that add new food variants, these ideas are meant to fit with the base game if they ever decide to add more food in the future. 1. Packaged Pasta: A very simple dish campers can make out in the wild is pasta. All you really need is a pot, some water to boil, and a campfire to cook it. After 8-10 minutes the pasta softens and is edible for consumption. For gameplay purposes, you can find a small box of macaroni in a shelter. You can't eat it dry because its hard and crunchy, so you'll have to get a fire going, boil some water and cook the pasta yourself. 2. Preserve Jars (Fruit Jam & Pickled Veggies): To keep fruit and veggies from getting rotten in the winter, people place fruit and veggies inside of glass jars to preserve them. It would make sense to find some of these jars inside of kitchens and storages. For simplicity, we'll say there's 2 jars containing multiple crops. 1 for fruit, and 1 for veggies. Because there well preserve, they don't spoil and are usually safe to eat. Lets say they are as rare as finding a jar of peanut butter. 3. Carton of Eggs: Most people who camp bring some eggs with them for the protein. Since its a apocalypse, most eggs will be rotten and unsafe for consumption, but if your lucky, you can find a carton containing 6 eggs that can be eaten. You can either eat them raw, or boil them for more nutrition. 4. Vitamin drinks: Its important to keep your immune system strong to avoid catching illnesses. 1 helpful solution is a small drink (the size of a Go-energy drink) containing lemon, ginger, and honey. it doesn't provide much hydration, but it does offer a new positive affliction called "virus immunity". For a short time, you will be able to consume food below *50% without getting food poisoning because your bodies immune system is strong enough to fight the affliction. If your in a situation where you have to resort to eating low quality food, this drink will help you avoid the consequence. 5. MRE variants: So there's only 1 type of MRE you can find in the world, but since airline food as different variants, I thought it would make some sense to have MRE variants out in the world. You can find them in different color packaging to help identify what type of food your eating. If we want to go more in depth mechanic wise, there's also a MRE that requires the person to boil water, pour it into the package, wait 10 mins and then consume. It may be a bit complicated for the game's design so we can leave that as optional. These are just some of the ideas to add some variety to gameplay and fit the world of survival.

Emphasis on "Survival". I like to think there are 3 types of survival games: casual, midcore, and hardcore Casual: Survival is just a minor feature you have to manage, majority of the game is about exploration, crafting and building (ex: Minecraft, Terraria, & Starbound) Midcore: Survival requires more attention to manage, but its mostly basic and other gameplay features overshadow them. (ex: Raft, The Forest, & Ark) Hardcore: Survival is brutal and unforgiving, a true test to how long you can stay alive before something brings your demise. (ex: The Long Dark, Don't Starve, & Green Hell)

If you ever played Wintermute Chapter 3, you would know there's a side quest where you find a prison guards body out in the snow. If you follow the blood trail it leads to a shack with a convict inside. The blood trail in this side quest is more visually noticeable compared to a animals blood trail. I want that sort of level of detail when following a blood trail.

I truly dislike how pitch black it becomes indoors. Your vision is limited, you can't craft/repair/or research books in the dark, and you have to use 1 of your light sources just to see where your going. Even with daylight, I'd have to use my lantern just to help me find items hidden in the room. Not sure if the team is planning some changes to the overall lighting, but as you read the title, I thought of a alternative solution to make darkness & night time less bothersome. Candles would be static objects found inside of some shelters. Using matches or a lit torch, you can ignite the candles to provide some additional lighting in the room. If your someone that spends a lot of time in the dark, you'll have more freedom to perform different actions during the night. We've already seen how candles are used in Wintermute chapter 3, so implementing them into survival shouldn't be too complicated. In addition, to add some negative side effects, the candles will eventually burn out after a said period of time (3-5 hours give or take). You won't be able to reuse them, unless you extinguish the candles yourself and save them for later. Perhaps there could be a feature that allows you to find more candles and replace the ones that burnt out.