artmunki

About a million years ago I was working as a pixel artist (mostly doing early pre-smartphone phone games and occasional GBA games). A lot of my work in the first year was just reworking existing graphics - dull gruntwork - so I adopted the name artmonkey (from codemonkey) for our lunchtime LAN gaming sessions, and as that was the early days of me having an online presence it kinda stuck. My profile pic is from a comic I worked on a little more recently - the story was a kinda trippy crime caper, and the client wanted the credits page done in the style of police lineup pics - I really loved my pic (once I'd coloured them all), and I've been using it everywhere ever since.

I've been low-key using TLD to practise my scenic photography framing (which I've never had a great eye for) since first getting comfortable in the gameworld, so this is an addition I've definitely been looking forward to since it was announced. Given the electrical limitations of the setting, I'm guessing that either the camera will be digital and we'll have to access/upload our pics (and charge the batteries, maybe?) during an aurora, or - far more likely I think - the camera will be a good ol' analogue and base customisation will include being able to set up a basic darkroom for manually processing film & photos, probably only in bigger bases (good use for bunkers tho!), with chemicals, paper and film supplied by the trader. If this game ends up including puttering about in a darkroom, I may never play another game!

And as schist is such a flaky stone type, it would actually make sense that those would wear out at least as quickly as the game's whetstones, since schist is so prone to breaking. I mean, really, has Bear Island only ever been supplied with cheap whetstones made of clay from Wish.com or something? Those things wear out so damn fast! 😜

In my current run the moose spawn by the hut seems to be occupied every time I visit TWM, so I've already carpeted the hut interior with plush moose-skin rugs. Guess I know what I'll be doing next time I'm on the mountain!

There's a backer-submitted note left behind somewhere - I think in the PV farmhouse, but I'm not totally sure - that talks about what sort of water-smoothed rock you should look for to use as a sharpening stone. But of course, that's not something you can actually do in the game, even tho it would totally make sense, presumably because keeping your gear in good repair is intended as part of the survival struggle. If they haven't added something as simple as that, which is actually referenced in the game, I can't really see them adding something with as many possible uses as polypore this late in the day, unfortunately.

Good to know!

I've seen hooks that had no loop to tie to, and instead the end of the shaft was flattened into a sorta tiny flat spoon shape - I guess you bind the line tight around the shaft, and the slightly wider spoon bit stops it from slipping off. I have no idea what those hooks were meant for, but it seems like they'd be a little easier to pull through than doubled-over loops, if you used them for stitching.

Very clean confirmation of the mechanics, Zak. Maybe you could have included a quick test on the ice too, to see how much longer wearing crampons gives you before it breaks. Tho to be fair, that might be a bit more difficult to create identical tests for, since falling through triggers a new autosave. The ankle sprain thing probably isn't worth trying to parse out tho - too much RNG in that one.

That would certainly explain the twitchy dancing! ;D

I can't really imagine they'll ever show up in any of the smaller regions, because they'd just be too hard to avoid, and most wolves in those regions tend to run solo or in pairs anyway - so not DP or the 4 small transit regions, nor can I see them being added to Mystery Lake. Not too sure about AC either. But a single pack randomly spawning in place of one of the wolf groups in each of the larger regions, maybe even a coupla packs in PV & FA - that could make things interesting. I kinda wonder how the normal wolves would interact with timbies too. After all, there's no normal wolves in BI, and I think there's only 2 places in Blackrock where it would even be possible for them to meet, but I've never seen it.

Never used a proper suture myself, but after a clumsy accident a few years back I got to watch in fascination as a charge nurse stitched closed the very neat slash I'd managed to give myself on the back of my thumb. Before the stitches I could see the pink bones of my moving thumb joint, so the whole experience is kinda indelibly etched in my memory. And of course, is now often recalled when I think about using a hook & gut to mend stuff in TLD.

Stim hidden under the snow?

Aye, but mending is a kinda undefined skill in the game anyway, so you can imagine it covers broader applications, and using fishing tackle for sewing does at least make it just a little bit more like suturing.

Ooh, I'd almost forgotten about the pending wildlife refresh. Can't wait to see what's changing.

Ah, right. I've only noticed it when mapping, but maybe it's triggered by anything that accelerates the passing of time. After all, mapping takes like 10/15mins or something IIRC, but only takes a coupla seconds of play, so it's like a shorter version of passing an hour with cards. Any nearby animals continue on their paths when time's sped up, so my guess would be that sometimes the ptarmigans just get kinda stuck when that happens.