artmunki

But it was an informative wall of text, giving us some insight into the game's development. That's a good thing.

Sometimes I've seen it sorta semi-reset its route back down to the end of the Hibernia pier when I come back out on deck, so you only have to wait a wee while to let it wander back down to the Riken, but other times I think it must reset right back to its cave, or maybe just despawns entirely. I'm seeing it as a good thing tho - for the moment it means that I don't have to take out the bear every time I go to DP, and it's not like I have a shortage of resources at the boat.

Yup, I've definitely seen the same there recently, several times. Gotta have a bit more luck & patience to get the bear from the safest hunting spot on the island now.

Well, the difference between now and then was enough for me to notice and remember from a wee clip I saw, so I'd say you're doing a stellar job!

I love the atmospherics of the game as it is now, but some of these older images are just stunning. The overall graphics quality has obviously been considerably upgraded now, and I get the impression that the weather system has seen even more substantial changes, but the vibrancy and range of the colour palette in these older shots is just amazing, and the distance effects look beautiful. It's clear how important the visual styling of this game has been since the very beginning.

When the Zone dropped I'd just happened to end the previous day's play by sleeping in Feedwater cave in TP, so I was perfectly placed to dive right into the new region on day of launch. I reckon I might just try to do the same again, but not accidentally this time. When I mapped all of TP a little later, I also noticed an out-of-sight un-roped climb point picked up by my mapping, which has to eventually lead to the pass region. I'm curious to see if that rope will appear when the new region opens, or if we'll have to drop it ourselves from the other side.

You can also still duck into cars to escape a charging bear without it resetting, so there's still a ground-level option for that kinda hunting when you can't find a tree or rock the bear can't reach you on.

Aye, I had a few of those before the patch too. I still remember when I was first getting to know AC, wondering for a while if they were deliberate, and the bigger ones gave you more prepped bark. When I figured out that wasn't the case, that's when I realised it was just a fun wee glitch. I also vaguely remember one wee clip from someone (perhaps a clip that Zak linked to, as he's the main TLD player I watch), where the bark was so big the player could almost crouch-walk under it!

Well, at least I'm not the only one who missed them.

I can't find the video I first noticed this on, but it was a play of a early version back when ML was the only region. The part that really stuck out was when the player was sorta chasing a deer on the hills beside the cliff wall between Trapper's and the train tunnel, and the hills seemed notably bigger than I'm used to, in comparison to the deer and the player perspective. But I also remember that the interior scaling seemed much more familiar in the same video. Just something I was kinda curious about.

I haven't seen any notably outsized birch bark in AC in quite a while now, but maybe that's just me. I thought it had been patched out.

Aw, does anyone else miss the big birch bark? One of the highlights of any trip to AC for me was always seeing how big they'd be this time.

Yeah, that sounds about right to me. I definitely remember meeting a bear back there at least once, but it was ages ago, and I haven't seen it since I kinda got used to Blackrock. Which is why I thought it might have been in Wintermute - that's how I decided to first start familiarising myself with the region, before risking my main run.

Somewhere north of 3000hrs for me - literally an order of magnitude more than I've spent on any other game, apparently!

Always interesting to see old screenshots from a world I'm so familiar with in its current form. One thing I've been wondering for a while - a few old plays I've watched (and maybe a couple of these pics) kinda had me thinking that the scaling of the outside world was a little different in early versions. Is this right, or am I just imagining it?

In my last run, that's where I decided to finish mastering fishing, cuz it's a nice place to hang around and you can pop a hole in the ice pretty close to the cave. And the basin moose spawn was active in that run too, so that cave was very well provisioned.

I think my favourite bit of MT is down in the basin. It's like a nice wee micro-region to itself - deer & wolves on the ice, a few rabbits scattered around, good fishing in the lake, and sometimes even a moose. In HRV I like to go down in the valley too, tho I admit I was kinda forced to get used to that area when I got badly moose-stomped once and had to stick around for a while to heal up. Either that or the whole plateau area up at Monolith Lake - no bear, only one or two wolves, good views, and a few different caves to hang out in.

Isn't there a bear in the prison yard in Wintermute? And I'm sure I've seen mention somewhere of a bear being a rare spawn there, so that may not have been a bug.

Not a region I visit very frequently, but I've noticed that quite a lot of my favourite grabbed pics have been in Ash Canyon. Not just up high stuff either, tho obviously the views are pretty fantastic - get down in the canyons when the light's pretty, and you can get some lovely shots. But to be honest, all of the regions have their moments, with the right weather/lighting conditions. Just gotta be ready to stop and grab a few pics when the pretty impresses you.

Make sure I have a good supply of food, water & firewood at several sites in each region, and cured hides too. (okay, maybe only one site in the smaller regions) Craft at least one of everything, even if only to leave it somewhere. Make sure all the forges are well supplied with coal & scrap. Map the whole island, and build a rockpile cache at every cave I favour. Master all skills. Harvest every car battery and take the lead to BI or Blackrock ammo benches. (I mostly play Voyageur) Mark out the tideline in BI, and fog trails from my preferred fishing huts. Kill every bear at least once. Cook every recipe at least once. Keep beachcombing. Fill all the gas cans I can find, and make sure they're well distributed. Keep 'em filled I don't think I've ever come close to finishing all of these tasks, and I'm sure I've missed a couple of my usual busywork tasks too, so there's always something else to do.

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.