Let's survive The Long Dark

[Burning Bridges]

P.S. It looks like you cannot repair sewing kits anyway. So the toolkit problem may not be so bad, but it definitely rules out the use of the hatchet for wood.
I need something to chop meat from carcasses, and foraging wood degrades it by 10% for every use.
That's totally not worth it when you know how to forage wood.

Here is my complete, accumulated knowledge about wood:

Spoiler

>Never use a hatchet for foraging wood, unless your ok with using up your hatchet, metal and toolkit very fast
I sometimes forage 2 cedar + 2 fir wood or 4 fir/cedar wood in 2h, so you really dont need a hatchet
>instead go to a safe warm place outside, like the shack opposite the homestead
>forage there only when the weather is warm (afternoons) and you are in a good condition
>always forage at least two hours (I think the foraged wood is a floating number, so if you forage 0.6 in 1h you get 0 but if you forage 1.2 in 2h you get 1)
>if the weather is bad you may forage inside, to get 0-2 reclaimed wood for 300 calories/h which is barely worth it but better than nothing
>dont make the mistake of foraging inside buildings all of time, because outside you often find tinder (seen this many times on youtube, that people ran out of tinder because of that)

and also about fires:

Spoiler

>never start a fire with a newspaper, instead harvest three tinder plugs from every newspaper
>start fire always with ceder wood, it has a much higher chance of success
>add reclaimed wood to the fire
>fir wood is needed for repairs, but has the highest burn time (1.5h), so it makes great firewood
>firestrikers have the highest chance of succest
>save accelerant for emergencies. Some people on youtube suggest using it to save tinder, but that is wrong. I already explained how you can get unlimited tinder so saving tinder is moot
>you might use accelerant in emergencies, but it is a very limited resource. I just found 4 or 5 in the whole game
>boiling / cooking different amounts has an influence on time, so check that. I found that for me it is best to boil in 0.5 litre amounts but that may be wrong
>always end your fire with melting snow, not boiling, because boiled water is only added when it finishes 100%
>your condition has a big influence on how long everything takes, so try to rest, eat and drink before you make a fire
>dont be greedy and try to make 20 litres of water in one go. Unlkess you wonna starve to death while making fire, it is much better to use only 2 pieces of log, do a little cooking and water for 2 days.
>don't make too many fires though, one every 1-2 days is enough

 

[Burning Bridges]

And another important tip for every first time player:

Spoiler

dont go inside the Carter Hydro Dam unarmed or unprepared

 

[Burning Bridges]

Currently a patch is released almost every day. That means they are working 24/7 on the game, great.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The condition of my gear is worrying me more than food.

Inside my hut, a pair of mittens has degraded over 10% during 14 days just by lying in a metal container, which is stupid but not a biggie.
But I am extremely worried that one day all my matches and firestrikers will have disintegrated and that IS a biggie.

Today I thought up a new trick lets see if it works. Some people suggested that things decrade much slower inside frozen carcasses, so I'll try to make us of some of my next door neighbors. Let's call them Max (he is the fellow at Max's last stand) and Felix (pictures will follow later)

They are both just 10 minutes walking from the base camp.

Max will have buried under him a bit of everything that is useful for my long term survival, like matches, cans of beans and stuff like that.

Felix, the fellow who decided to lay down besides a dead deer will serve as my closet. That means I'll move my spare clothes to him. The hope is that they will soon be frozen stiff will degrade no more or just a little.

Then I'll have both of them marked with a flare, so that I dont forget where I have my 2 depots!

 

[Burning Bridges]

I also thought that I could use a fridge for meat so perhaps Max, Felix or Alex in the Lone Cabin could help me with that. Alex has two more friends who camp directly outside the cabins door, so that would mean another 20 kg of storage space. It's just a pity that the cabin has no stove and is a bit too far from my main base, but perhaps I will go there more often.

Another option would be the camp office, if I can find someone lying around there. The guy directly opposite the exit didn't spawn in this game which is a pity. Or to move to one of the lake cabins and cook in one of the ice fishing huts? That hasn't been tried before, it could be interesting because I would have like a whole village to live in, and plenty to eat (there are always wolves and deer on the lake). The downside is that it is much colder in the (open) huts so I could only cook on warm days, but on the flip side I could have fresh meat for the cold days .. hm we'll see.

But I think that might not be such a good idea after all. The idea of being killed by a wolf while I fry my deer steaks does not sound like it's worth it. Although I really like the spot.

I think I will simply turn someone into a fridge, put both my cooked and uncooked venison there, and tell you how it went. Then I'll walk every day the 150m to fetch my breakfast, a good morning walk will do me good.

 

[Burning Bridges]

In case someone reads without known the game, Here is a map with the locations.

 

[Burning Bridges]

20 days, 5 hours

I have plenty of gear, ammo and food but my equipment starts falling apart and I don't how long I can keep it together if I dont fnd a better way to store things.

the stuff in my locker gets worn at an alarming rate. Even my rifle and my toolkit have taken 2% wear just by sitting in the steel locker, let alone that every shot from the rifle causes 5-10% extra wear.

I think I need to store even the rifle and the toolkit in a corpse, which would mean walking back and forth to the corpses every time I need them, and I could store even less meat. But the rifle and toolkit are too important.

But not all things went badly. I shot another stag with a clean shot. Hey from the antlers this looks rather like a Roosevelt Wapiti to me than a deer, but who cares. I harvested almost 9 kg meat from it

then stored some of it in my fridge, went back, cooked the rest and went antoehr time to the depot to store the cooked meat as well. I had to realize that Felix can only hold 10kg and I cannot keep clothes and meat there at the same time. But it is a sign of hope that decay in the freezer seems to happen at a much lower rate, how much lower we will see.

I may have to move the clothing to another freezer, which unfortunately takes time and the weather was very cold during the last days. A day spent shooting and cooking the stag and then carrying all the meat back and forth to the depots left me totally exhausted and I could not collect more than 3 reclaimed wood. My wood stockpile is shrinking again, and I have only 10h left of firewood reserve out of 18 I had from the bunker.

Then I moved 10 kg of my most precious gear to the Max depot. But I man I am glad that I now have 40 matches and most of my medicine buried and frozen.
I even put some of my rifle ammo into the depot, because guess what: it wears out very fast when I place it on the floor as I had done and one box was down to 20%.

Lessoin learned is don't drop items on the floor they will wear out very quickly.

I have started shredding more and more useless clothing, altogether I have 8 cloth but this is not much when my winter coat takes 2 for every 15% repair. I have a lot of stuff left and am not in need of clothing, I just don't see how this is sustainable in the long term.

So I think I should better try looking for more clothes and work on improving the storing situation, before concentrating on firewood, because wood that is my least concern right now.

But my water consumption is so big that I need to spend more time looking for wood sooner or later. so far I never managed to have more than 4 liters of water in reserve.

It also suck that I have not found a single water purification tablet, that would help me greatly in saving wood.

 

[Burning Bridges]

21 days 2 hours

During the last day I have worked myself nearly to the point of exhaustion, but I have moved all gear to safe places.

Journal entry

DEPOT 1 Max last stand 10 min to the right: EMERGENCY DEPOT up to 3 days worth of food cans and soda, 2 military rations, medicine, matches, knife, hatchet, 3 x tinder, 5 x ammo, 1 fire accelerant. contains everything I need to live, expept rifle and clothing. I should add enough water and wood so that I could completely rely on this depot for ca 3 days.

DEPOT 2 Felix carcass to the left: 10 minutes walk, rifle, toolkit, 2 days meat storage. I will walk to this depot once every day to get fresh food.

DEPOT 3 Lone cabin 1h walk: CLOTHING ca 12 pieces of clothing still in good condition and some useful stuff that are not needed, marked with flare. I dont know if I need the clothes but they are too good to shred them.

DEPOT 4 body at unnamed pond, 3/4 way to lone cabin: nothing yet

I MUST take all the clothing from Felix and bring it to the Lone cabin which is a kilometer away. Then I will have enough space for food and the rifle and the repair toolkit, my most precious possession.

I shlepped all those spare clothing and extra stuff from the Felix depot over the 1h walk to the Lone cabin, where I know of 3 carcasses with 30 kg storage space in a well known location. This is not an ideal spot at all, but at least I will know where it is and I have the cabin to rest just 5m from the depot.

I could also strike out from here to the bunker or even the Hydro dam, where I have not yet searched half of the containers, and where I will still find a lot of food.

On the way back I also discover 2 kg of carrion, which I add to my food supply.

Note to self: I must not sleep before I have cooked all of it and stored it otherwise it will be worthless. And also make 1-2 liters of water.

I am dead tired but the good news is, it works. The meat I stored in Felix is still in excellent condition.
97% is as good as it was when I put it inside.
After more than a day that's fantastic. Or was it two days? I am not sure anymore how the days pass by.

When I arrived I was desperately tired and my carry capacity was down to 15kg. Good that my load was only 13kg so I could still make it.

All that matters is that I can now regroup and concentrate on my other problems, while I can be sure that my gear does not slowly decompose in the hut.

I almost made it. I make fire with one of my precious firelogs. There are still 4 left, or did I make another fire yesterday? I can't think.

Must .. Sleep

 

[Burning Bridges]

Day 21

 

[Burning Bridges]

Journal Entry, Day 22

I cannot remember how or when I went to sleep.
But I woke up refreshed and with new vigor, and found 3 liter water and 2 kg cooked venison.

This will be the first day in a long time I can spend on foraging wood and doing some repairs, and I do think I will then soon strike out to the Camp office and look around some of the huts on Mystery Lake.

After things looked so gloomy the last days, I have time to make calculations based on my toolkit status.

Toolkit is at 39%. That means I can get 3 to 4 repairs out of it, which I of course are used for nothing but the rifle.
Knifes and hatchets are only used for chopping meat and do not degrade so quick. Wood will be collected without tools.

The rifle is currently at 75%. With a minimum of 3 repairs worth an extra 25% each, I'd have a 150% total, with ca 10% used per shot.
That means I could fire 15 rounds from it, which is approximately what I have (13).
So even if I will not find another toolkit, I could probably shoot up to 13 deers, which means I can make it for at least another 40 days, and from my previous record, many more. [EDIT: I have calculated again and this is probably a gross underestimation, because so far I have only used 2 bullets in 20 days. Let's treat 40 days as a WORST case scenario. A positive estimation may be rather something like over a 100 days! ]
Added to that I have found a week worth of food on the map, and stored a lot of it in a depot only 10 minutes from my hut.
So I need no longer worry about food, just make sure I have enough wood and water and do not miss shots. Every missed shot means 3 days subtracted from my survival.

Bedroll has degraded to 40 % condition, meaning I can no longer store it in the hut either ..
Although I also tink that the bedroll is perhaps my least essential item, there are places to sleep, except at the Hydro dam.

This was the wood situation last night, 3 firelogs left from the Preppers Cache, worth 6 hours.

That means I have begun to slowly eating up my wood reserves, and should try to make good today.

So yeah, finally back to foraging some wood, in the woodcutters cabin.

At then end of the day I have added 5 cedar wood to my stockpile, which means I have a total of 11h.

Added to that is a particularly good piece of firwood that I have kept aside for repairs.

I also found a little time to repair my scarf. Gives me a +0.2C bonus for 1 piece of cloth and 5% wear on my sewing kit. Not much, but little by little, with every repair my clothing is improved to near perfect condition.

I am by the way changing jacket when I am inside.
The basic winter coat keeps warmer, but weighs a whopping 3.0 kg. Whereas the down ski jacket gives me 1C less, but weighs only 500 gram. That means 2.5 kg less weight. The down ski jacket is becoming my favorite piece of clothing, only in and around the basecamp of course.

I also head to my freezer once a day, after all it's just 20 minutes walk total.

The result of freezer experiment is extremely satisfying. 4 kg cooked meat stored here has only lost 1-2% in 2 days.
Meaning I can now even keep a little storage of meat, perhaps for a whole week.

The toolkit also has stayed "fresh" inside, and is still at 39%. Same with rifle (75%).
I think I do not need to check the status every other day now, it will be safer here than anywhere else.
The only thing that bothers me at all is that I can only store 20kg in the 2 bodies around my house. If I want to store more I have to make longer and longer walks, which cost time and energy.
The next body I have found is at the unnamed pond, and then there is another 3 at the lone cabin, and probably another 3 or 4 in approximate distances when I go other directions.
So I could conserve 50-100 kg gear and food in ca 1km distance around the base, if I have to.

___________________________________________________________________________

P.S. Seeing the big picture now I came up with the counterintuitive strategy of moving my precious Max depot further away from the base, so I can use it to store meat. Yes this makes totally sense. When the weather improves a little, I will take everything from Max, march in the direction of camp office and store everything in another depot.
I do think I remember that there is one at the tunnel collapse, which is a great place for a depot because it is very easy to find.

 

[Surf Solar]

Shame no one's really interested in the LP, it's a good game and you're doing a nice playthrough as well.

 

[Nevill]

It's not that. I imagine most people like me never heard of this game until this thread was created. So I visit here from time to time, trying to see if this is my kind of game, but I don't know enough to start asking questions, so I just watch the OP play.

I have one question, though. How come thirst is an issue with all that snow lying around?

 

[Burning Bridges]

Seeing the big picture now I came up with the counterintuitive strategy of moving my precious Max depot further away from the base, so I can use it to store meat. Yes this makes totally sense. When the weather improves a little, I will take everything from Max, march in the direction of camp office and store everything in another depot.
I do think I remember that there is one at the tunnel collapse, which is a great place for a depot because it is very easy to find.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Thanks for the thumbs up.

No problem I think this game will soon be better known and become a Codex approved game. Believe this is one of the best games I have played in the 25 years of my gaming career, and that should say something.

Also the LP motivates me to approach this more strategically and not lose track of time.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I have one question, though. How come thirst is an issue with all that snow lying around?

Counterintuitive, but something you should remember in rl as well.

Eating big amounts of snow causes hypothermia, especially in those temperatures. These are -10 to - 30C, not your average winter days.
I am not living in 'Siberia, but these are the coldest temperatures that we hit in East Germany (colder), maybe once every 2 years. In 2007/2008 I have experienced what -30C are, and it feels like walking through a deep freezer (I believe they run at temperatures of -25C). I was almost running to get inside, even when I just had to walk across the courtyard. When you would start sucking ice at these temperatures, your tongue will stick to it, or when you touch metal it also feels sticky. So you will not eat a lot of snow either believe me.

Also there is a risk of bacteria. This is of course grossly overdone in the game, as I have eaten snow as a kid and did not die from it But you must melt snow to get unsafe water, which can still give you diarrhea if you drink it. If you want to get safe potable water you need to boil the unsafe water, which doubles the amount of fire time used up. An alternative is to use water purification tablets. However, in this playthrough I never found any.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Having said that, I would appreciate some suggestions at this point how to go on, even if you are not qualified from playing the game.

What I am doing right now, filtering through important stuff and storing in the cold is something that I haven't seen discussed anywhere.
It means we are on the leading edge of the game right now, and you won't find any of that in the youtube videos. Most of them imo give terribly outdated tips with exceptions of course.

Some people have hit 100 days and I think I could do that in this playthrough, if I stay on my toes. For some reason the wolves have respected me for some time, it may be for the fact that I am in excellent condition, or because I killed Fluffy, or just luck.

 

[Comte]

Shame no one's really interested in the LP, it's a good game and you're doing a nice playthrough as well.

I'm interested in the LP and it has gotten me interested in the game. I never heard about it before it was posted here. I watched some youtube LP's after reading this but prefer this format to the annoying narrator's in the YT video's.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Struggle for survival breeds comradry, thanks dude!

 

[Nevill]

I am not living in 'Siberia, but these are the coldest temperatures that we hit in East Germany (colder), maybe once every 2 years. In 2007/2008 I have experienced what -30C are, and it feels like walking through a deep freezer (I believe they run at temperatures of -25C). I was almost running to get inside, even when I just had to walk across the courtyard. When you would start sucking ice at these temperatures, your tongue will stick to it, or when you touch metal it also feels sticky. So you will not eat a lot of snow either believe me.

Well, I am from Siberia, though I am not living there anymore.

You do not eat snow (though you certainly could if you aren't freezing), but you can take it in a flask and melt it near a fire. You need the fire to cook your food anyway. Also the bodily heat melts the snow quite well by itself if you take the flask under your clothes. And if you can't stay warm, you've got much bigger problems than thirst.

I just can't imagine that ever being a real problem. Can't imagine any problems with bacteria either unless there is some kind of technological catastrophe that have contaminated the snow somehow, but then it would also affect other water sources, probably. Snow is just a frozen distilled water, after all.

If anything would be a problem, it is staying dry after and during your trips outside. Nothing saps bodily heat like being drenched in an ice-cold water or sweat, and the clothes and shoes dry slowly. But that aspect is ignored from what I've seen.

The whole survival angle is overdone, from what I can tell. Equipment deteriorates at impossible rates, food decays in minutes, clothes rot just by lying around. Quite funny seeing a survival game about something that may as well be everyday working conditions for some foresters.

Well, there probably woulnd't be a game if a pair of shoes could last you two years instead of two weeks.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Yes, that's partly how it works (melting snow at the fire), and the slow melting method (body heat) is missing from the game, and deteriorates at ridiculous rates, I agree with all that. I guess they have adjusted it for gameplay-realism not realism-realism. It is an ALPHA, and believe it is extremely well balanced for that, if gear would deteriorate at realisitc rates it would be boring.
And yes there is an infinite amount of snow and wood if that's what you mean, but you must manage time.

Well, there probably woulnd't be a game if a pair of shoes could last you two years instead of two weeks.

Yep!

 

[Burning Bridges]

Good point about transpiration and getting dry, I didn't think of that actually. Running should give a you transpiration problems more than exhaustion actually, and you might get pneumonia or a cold afterwards from it.

think I mentioned before that 2 other things I am missing is frostbite and scurvy, both common problems in those situations.

An infected tooth could be another, you might even have to pull the tooth or you could never completely recover.
Something I like about this idea is the humoristic side to it, it would be hilarious if you get tooth problems from eating too many candy bars and not using a toothbrush for an extended time

 

[Sranchammer]

This actually does run on my machine

 

[Drakron]

Shame no one's really interested in the LP, it's a good game and you're doing a nice playthrough as well.

Problem is as a game this seems to eb a "how long can you survive" but after a while you get all the mechanics you need and there is nothing else to do ... not building traps, raising animals, build crop fields, etc ... its just the same over and over.

That simply isnt that interesting to watch.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I know where you are coming from Drakron, but I don't like how you make it sound like it becomes a boring game.
So you think it is more interesting to WATCH someone slaying his 100,000th monster in Wizardy 8 than watch someone bag his 4th deer? You must be kidding me dude. If the game gets boring you can begin another run, that's what I do when it gets repetitive. The challenge currently is finding solutions for the missing things random generation. Often a crucial item is missing, like a toolkit, or tools to repair anything. In one run there wasnt a single hunting knife and only one hatchet, so I had to use the hatchet to harvest meat. The developers have already promised another map for later this year, and they are adding stuff to the game, new items, crafting and such.
So with all your logic, please tell me how long you have even played this game and if you still claim that this is a boring game.
This is the first since games like UW, JA2 and VtmB where I continue runs WAY past the mid-game and search every square inch of a map. By the one week mark I had already shelved IWD, BG, Witcher, Kotor and all those games, even M&B2 can't hold a candle to this in my long term commitment.

I love the small scale of this game. I like how this game gives me just a few hundreds of things to do, and I will eventually find each single one of them, and search the whole map so I don't miss a single one. Instead of other games that give me 10,000s of things and I do only a few when I realize it's just grind.
As I wrote before, Troika did the same in VtmB. Only 1 pistol in the first level, another 2 or 3 in an episode, and only very few bullets.
Compared to "cherished" RPGs, you find more loot in the first 3 corpses in Skyrim than you find in a whole level here.

 

[Burning Bridges]

23 days, 1 hour

During the last days some things developed completely differently than I expected.

It was all good though. I was able to claim a lot of wood, eat hearty meals, deer mostly. Deer steaks for dinner and deer scrotum as dessert and more fatty things as snacks in between.

Most of all I found that the map is still holding surprises!

On day 22 it was really warm inside the woodcutter's shack

+8C so I was able to forage for 3 hours and I got 4 cedar wood without even a hatchet. I still wasn't cold when I got out.

I have lots of meat stored in my deep freezer and not in my wildest dream could I have hoped that it woulkd conserve so well. Just 10% decay in 3 days, which means I will be able to store meat for a whole week!

I was able to make more repairs to my ski jacket, but I am just doing this bit by bit.

one of my most precious possessions, insulated boots, and in fairly good condition too.

For the first time I was able to make a huge monster of a fire that lasted 4 hours (rested and ate a lot before!), and make over 6 liters of water.

I found a bit of a newspaper that talked about wildlife depopulation and became a little scared. So I took a walk to study the wildlife surrounding my home, and so far there seems to be no sign of deer getting any scarcer. I have killed only a little and only when I needed, and used everything that I got, so their numbers seem to not be much affected by me. I must have an eye on this though.

But now to the surprise. took a little walk for number 2, and I discovered a backpack just laying 100m behind my house!

and inside a sewing kit in perfect condition, worth 20 repairs to my clothes!!!

I can now imagine many survivors who succumb to a miserable life without some important item while it's lying just a few steps from them. From now on I will be more attentive to small things that I might miss!

I also find 3kg of meat carcasses, which I cooked in the fire and began to store in the said backpack so I did not have to use another rifle round.

The backpack holds 20kg so it is the perfect freezer. Just 2 minutes from my home, I can store all my meat AND rifle here and I can leave my previous depots where they are.

I was able to collect more wood than I used up, and though I made 2 huge fires I now have a total of 13h firewood. Since I now also have surplus water and food, I can collect still more in the next days.

The next days I will wait until the weather improves enough so I can start a systematic search of some map areas.

I already decided I will leave the Mystery Lake cabins alone. There are still 6 huts and 4 shacks which I never entered, and which may hold some real treasure. I will only enter those if there is a reason.

But there is still a lot of stuff in the Hydro dam and the Preppers Cache, there are some unsearched and possibly undiscovered corpses too, and I will look for small things and miracles like the Number 2 backpack.

Life is good! I am so well fed and strong that I thought of jerking off for the first time since my odyssee began .. over 3 weeks!
Never happened in my life before. I need all my strength though and perhaps I'll go find a Playboy magazine or something.