The Long Dark

[Xarg]

Closing in on 100 days survived with a house in Coastal Highway fully stocked with all manner of things, I even found a hacksaw! Think I probably have 200kg of items now, so it seems like now might be the time to establish an outpost, and leave a full kit + spares in it, so the move to Pleasant Valley goes a lot more smoothly. Depending on where the access points for the new area are, it might actually pay to leave most of my kit stashed in Coastal Highway, and bring anything spare back from Pleasant Valley to it.

[Destined]

I recently (and finally) discovered Pleasant Valley. Established a base there and can lead a relatively good life there. But I am still exploring the area and almost froze to death recently (did not check how cold it was and suddenly I was freezing ). And that even though I play on easy...

[Xarg]

I've still got most of the interior of Coastal Highway to explore, there are a few isolated huts and shacks I'm going to go looking for. Have you been collecting and drying gut/deer hide? Crafting the pants or boots would give you a large boost in protection from the weather. Or rabbit skins for the mittens, those are good too. I'm working on getting the bear skin bedroll crafted, but the bear I shot... well, it's probably pretty mad at me right now. Should probably go track it down. Maybe find the wolf with the knife wounds too.

[Destined]

No, I got the rifle and hatchet just right before I got to pleasant valley (so before, I could not craft the bow). Got one deer so far and snared my first rabbits there. I am currently curing the hides and should be able to make some mittens in three days. Since I play on easy, I at least do not have the problem of animals trying to kill me. Here the difficulty is more a "I try to hunt them, but as soon as they are aware of me, they run away". Maybe I will start a new game in Pleasant Valley on medium difficulty. I still get killed pretty quick by wolves, but in my last try I encourtered three before I actually died. So I am getting better (if slowly ).

[Xarg]

I haven't really spent a lot of time in Pleasant Valley, typically I start in Mystery Lake, I know where all the shelters are so there is typically somewhere nearby to shelter if a blizzard comes, or if a wolf is after you and you don't think you can survive it. I really hope the map feature is implemented soon, even if it's just a piece of paper with pencil/crayon drawings on it. Last time I really played it, and got to Pleasant Valley, I spent most of the time either semi lost in the middle, or wandering the far outskirts of the map, that place seems huge.

Edited October 8, 2015 by Xarg

[Sotha]

I moved recently from Pleasant Valley to Coastal Highway.

 

What a boring place! You can almost see everything at a glance, house clusters 500m apart. Looks like it is utterly impossible to get lost, unless one wanders on the ice during a fog and loses bearings. And the amount of loot is insane: I've got several piles of canned food. On day 2 here I killed 3 wolves: one with bow, two with my bare hands so I have ton of meat, too. I've spread out my items in several places because I have so much stuff I'm lazy to gather them all to same location. Moving to a new place would require me carrying stuff back and forth several times

 

I do not lack anything. I have stuff to make arrows. I have maple for 8 bows and two rifles with 30+ bullets. The game is quickly starting to lose the challenge and with it goes my appetite. I should really consider restarting with the highest difficulty.

 

I've survived 75 days or so. Life is too easy. So easy it is becoming a chore. Oh, and I found Desolation Point. I will explore the highway and move there next. If I do not lose my interest, that is.

 

I hope future patches will bring something more. The story mode is highly anticipated (hopefully it happens in new, different regions...)

[Destined]

I am still amazed, how you are able to survive several wolf attacks with bare hands. I still haven't got the hang of it. I am also looking forward to the story content. Bt I believe, it will mostly take place in the kown areas. Might be, they introduce some new ones, but they will pretty surely use the old ones, too. If I remember correctly they also wanted to inlcude some tough choices and considering two consecutive bridges I found named "Heartbreak Bridge" and "Contemplation Bridge", I belive this might hint to story content. It would fit, at least...

 

 

I haven't really spent a lot of time in Pleasant Valley, typically I start in Mystery Lake, I know where all the shelters are so there is typically somewhere nearby to shelter if a blizzard comes, or if a wolf is after you and you don't think you can survive it. I really hope the map feature is implemented soon, even if it's just a piece of paper with pencil/crayon drawings on it. Last time I really played it, and got to Pleasant Valley, I spent most of the time either semi lost in the middle, or wandering the far outskirts of the map, that place seems huge.

 

I also sometimes miss a map feature. But on the other hand, it is more realistic. You are stranded in the wilderness. There is no map. But it would be nice, if could find paper and writing material for personal notes. Maybe we should suggest it. The game is in the making and the creators are quite open to suggestions.

[Xarg]

The map has been on the list of things to do for a long time, in the earlier builds there was a map button on the interface when you pressed Tab that did nothing, there was also a button to begin constructing a make shift shelter that was removed. Agreed with Sotha that Coastal Highway is an absolute loot piñata, I had some spare stuff coming out of Mystery Lake, perhaps 60kg of loot and 30kg of wolf meat, I've since tripled the amount of non-meat loot I have. I'm hoping Desolation Point is relatively sparse, so that I have a chance to use up some of these resources, as taking them all with me is becoming less and less viable. It would certainly help to lower the number of pairs of boots that spawn, I think, between the 3 types of boots, I have more than 10 pairs, and will probably end up scrapping all but 1 of them for leather, and repairing the final pair of boots to full as a backup pair incase a run of bad luck ruins my deerskin boots. I've also been finding a lot of food that has ended up being stockpiled, as the wolf population has been keeping me well fed for a while now. Perhaps the situation isn't so on hard, but so far medium has been a bit too kind to me. I am debating restarting on hard as well.

 

Perhaps seperating "repair skill" into cloth, leather, wood and metal would help, it is currently a little too easy to level up repair skill with clothing, which directly translates into not wasting material on botched metal and wood repair jobs (like the rifle).

Edited October 9, 2015 by Xarg

[Sotha]

Yeah, the skill system gets redundant very quickly. It penalizes the start when everything is scarce and difficult even without the higher risk of failure. Then later you have automatic 100% success rate in everything, coupled with near-infinite resources (tens of units of tinder, piles of cloth, 10 sewing kits). The difficulty curve drops really fast as you survive. Who the heck ever needs accelerant? I always have flat 100% in lighting fires.

 

Destined, my bad: I didn't mean "bare handed" as without weapons, but meant more like "in struggle with a knife." Didn't mean to lie, was just tired when writing. Anyhow, once you have all the crafted clothing you can knife wrestle with the wolves without much danger. I think the clothing weight is a factor in how much damage you receive. With the craftables I get only clothing damage from the wolves, which is simple to repair if you hoard pelts. I also have a tendency to land one hit with my bow on the animal as it charges, so it often is already wounded when the struggle begins. But of course, I do not always hit.

 

I thinn it is really good there is no automap. Much of the challenge comes from learning the territory and the risk of getting lost is important part of the game. In the end, the maps are quite small and with lots of landmarks. Navigating is really easy... unless you end in a fog. But fogs make the game more interesting.

[Destined]

Hm, I should really try to craft the clothing then. Even with a knife I usually die pretty quick in wolf attacks. A thing to remember for my next try on medium.

 

As for the map: I would also not want an automap feature. But a Scribble feature for notes would be nice ingame. Of course, you can write anything down out of game, but my desk is crowded with paper as it is and notes would most likely disappear pretty quick.

[Xarg]

The kind of map I would like to see would be the kind that is drawn in by the character as a player conducted action, no automatic map generation. Would also let the map have things like pens and pencils as consumable items that can take up the spawn points in houses currently being occupied by redundant basic wool hats (toque's are so much better) or the 20th pair of basic gloves. I don't think there's an issue with too many spawn points in the maps (mostly Coastal Highway is quite spawn point dense) so much as there could be more things to spread across the spawn points, reducing the amount of spare items being held in an inventory. I've got a closet (40kg) full of spare clothing, that I will likely never use unless somehow, all the wildlife gets removed from the area... those spawn points could have been so many other things.