Theoretical survival limit


damuchi

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Hey guys. I recently reinstalled The Long Dark after I heard it was in full release. Back when I played, there was only sandbox and there was a definite limit to how long any survivor can survive since the resources are finite and you'll eventually run out of something. I haven't played sandbox and I just finished up to episode 2 of the campaign.

How do resources respawn in sandbox now? I didn't notice rabbits respawning in the campaign. I didn't craft any snares (killed all the rabbits with stones) but do snares magically spawn rabbits in it when it manages to catch one? Is this the key to infinite guts and meat?

P.S I know that even if there is a finite amount of resource, a survivor can live for a pretty damn long time (I can't remember how many days I clocked in early-access but I think it is almost up to a year or slightly more), I was just wondering how much has changed.

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The only real theoretical limit that exists now is in scrap metal and cloth.  To a lesser degree, you're also limited in medicines since there are a finite number of reishi, rosehip and beard moss as well.  The absence of these doesn't necessarily guarantee a death (since you can do most things bare-handed and sleep off any illness - though it can be difficult)

The other essentials: food, water, firewood and fur; are more or less infinite.

I've never tested it but in the end I decided that even if you did everything else correctly you'd eventually die from "frostbite of the face" since there are no head coverings you can craft from natural (infinite) resources.

 

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I see. So for food the infinite supply is throwing rocks at bunnies? That's not enough is it? My understanding is that there is maple saplings don't respawn so shooting arrows is limited as well. You can knife fight wolves but medicine is limited as well.

Is there enough firewood spawning from blizzards? Do you have to cycle through bases to wait for wood to respawn? Is this the same as bunnies?

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Yes, this is all theoretical.  

Theoretically you could gather up 100,000 sticks and keep a fire burning for days after lighting it with your magnifying glass.   You can boil as much water as you want too.

Theoretically you can wait for a wolf to bring down a deer, then kill the wolf in a struggle with your bare hands,  somehow avoiding a "Blood loss" condition each time so you don't need bandages or antiseptic, then harvest both carcasses bare handed for meat to supplement your rabbit supply (snares until the recycled wood runs out, then stones).

Theoretically there's sufficient scrap metal around the world (assuming a hacksaw [which can be repaired with scrap metal] and sufficient time) to keep yourself in fishing hooks for thousands of days.   Fishing is also a supply of lamp oil, so even when the flares run out and there's no more cloth for torches you can still use a storm lantern (which don't decay last I checked).

Food poisoning, sprains and even infection will cure themselves given enough bed rest.   I'm not sure about blood loss because I've never pressed my luck on that one, but it's possible.

I still believe that at the theoretical limit it will be lack of a head covering that ultimately does a person in, and even that would be only if they got caught out in a bad blizzard.

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4 hours ago, Larkid said:

I still believe that at the theoretical limit it will be lack of a head covering that ultimately does a person in

^Either this, or a bad turn of events.  Hats aren't super critical on most difficulties but the Frostbite timer starts fast on Interloper.  Without a hat, Frostbite would be very hard to avoid.  I spent 125 days of a 135-day interloper run hanging at the beach in DP.   Beachcombing brought me enough cloth, metal, and saplings to stay ahead of my needs -- with care.  Firewood too, but gathering sticks and coal the usual way was easier and less risky.  It brought me plenty of meds and an occasional fish for lamp oil too.  But never a hat that wasn't already ruined.

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I see these threads pop up every so often, and there are often a lot of misconceptions on what actually limits survival time and by how much. So here is my latest attempt to try to summarise what is a fairly complicated issue.

What actually limits survival time? Well the obvious things to look into would be: Cloth (ie running out of clothing/bandages), Birch Saplings (for arrows to hunt with), Scrap Metal (to fish with), Firewood (to make food/water), and Firestarting materials (to actually make fires). So let us (briefly) go through them.

Even on Interloper there is literally hundreds of cloth (in the process of actually counting it, but this isn't an exaggeration at all), and well over 800+ on Stalker and below, so it's not hard at all to stay in hat so to speak (keep in mind wearing clothes makes them degrade about 10x faster then not, so if you are really going for the long haul you would only wear a hat when your frostbite risk got above a certain level, so probably only 1-2 hours a day at most) And you can still avoid frostbite even without a hat, just requires more careful play.

Napkin math shows that if you only wear your hat 6 hours a day (I really can't imagine you staying out longer then that on a daily basis anyways so this is already an exaggeration), a Wool Toque would lose about 0.325% durability a day. That is 1 cloth every 230 days to repair, if you wait until it is at 25%. Now obviously this is a bit of an ideal case (you may not want to let it get that low encase you accidentally forget to take it off before a wolf struggle and end up losing it, or you get caught in a blizzard and lose some durability on it), but I think you can see that even with only 50 pieces of cloth, and assuming about 5 times less efficient play (ie 1 cloth every 50 days lets say), you could have a hat for 2500 days. And the total cloth count on Interloper is closer to 400+ then 50 and that doesn't even include beach combing, which would probably give you enough cloth to save your hat if you played AT all carefully.

*Note obviously cabin fever forces sleeping in a cave sometimes if the weather doesn't cooperate to make an outdoor fire for 4+ days in a row with the magnifying lens*, but you can just stay warm in a bearskin bedroll in the back of a cave (keep in mind backs of caves don't get colder, so they give an effective +28C temp late game on Interloper, so it's not that hard to stay warm in one on the warmer maps (ie not TWM or PV) even without wearing a lot of clothes) and you won't have to wear your hat while you sleep to avoid frostbite. But even if you are super paranoid, like I said even with the much more inefficient consumption of cloth you can easily have a hat for thousands of days even without beach combing. So the argument that you would run out of hat eventually doesn't really pan out if you actually play as conservatively as possible and don't wear your hat unless you absolutely need to and don't let it get mauled by wolves.

*Outdoor fires (and boiling/cooking in 'marathons') should be your main method of avoiding Cabin Fever, as this prevents you from wasting as much cloth keeping your bedroll in good shape, and saves your clothes (since you can strip naked safely next to a roaring fire). So sleeping in a cave isn't actually the ideal/optimal strategy unless you are unlucky with the weather and can't make a lens fire and therefore don't really have a choice as you don't want to waste a match for no reason.

*Another note: I heavily gloss over the whole question of 'should I wear non crafted clothing as underlayers in other slots to help keep myself warm'. Basically, late game in Interloper it's unlikely this would keep you warm enough to make a real difference (it's just too cold even on the warmer maps on most days, and the difference between -10C and -20C feels like is basically nothing in practice as you start freezing almost immediately either way due to the greatly sped up warmth drain at the same 'Feels Like' temp on Interloper compared to Stalker/Voyageur and it doesn't matter if you are -1C or -100C feels like if you are freezing anyways), as on Interloper your condition % is your real temperature bar. But even if you chose to maintain clothing for 'realism', as long as you didn't wear it indoors, you could still make it last thousands of days due to all the cloth you can harvest. And at the end of the day, all you really 'need' clothing for is to avoid frostbite so you can just use crafted clothing only plus a hat.

*I don't really have good numbers on Beachcombing for Interloper, so I gloss over it. Depending on the rate at which this gives you cloth, this could actually mean you never run out if you play conservatively enough, but I have no solid information on this.

Food wise: If you allow starvation, you can live off just rabbits as well, but even if you aren't willing to exploit (ie you ban all starving like I do), there are over 80 birch saplings (Counted 86 in one game, and I assume Broken Railroad has even more, since that was from before launch). There is far more Maple then you could ever break bows (unless you intentionally shoot arrows into snow to preserve arrow durability while wasting bow durability) shooting all the arrows. Each Sapling makes 3 arrows, and each arrow can kill 4 animals if you don't miss* (lets assume some missing and say 3). If you are going for the super long term, 86 saplings * 3 arrows each * 3 bear kills per arrow before it breaks * 10 days of food per bear = 7740 days of meat. This is again, assuming you never starve, that every bear only yields 30kg of meat (sometimes it can be much more), that you miss some shots, and that you always burn about 3300 calories a day (you can do better then that with Efficient Machine, or just playing a more sedentary lifestyle as you would in the end game). And that isn't even including the (again literally not an exaggeration) over 900 scrap metal available* you can make into hooks to fish with*. I don't really have much information on fishing since I never actually do it, but 2700 fishing tackle is going to take you pretty far at Fishing 5 with only a very small breaking chance I can imagine*.

*There is actually well over 1000 Scrap Metal even on Interloper, but I assume you use some of it on tool repairs and other things, so 900 is a 'safe estimate' for how much you would have to make hooks with. In the Upper and Lower Dam ALONE since the Wintermute update, there is now 725 Scrap Metal and 84 Cloth you can get by breaking stuff apart, even on Interloper Mode. There is 134 cloth (but that count was again, many updates ago, but I don't think anything has changed) in the PV Farmhouse alone too, and this doesn't even include all the Scrap Metal on DP (which has an absurd amount as well: 264 at my last count but that was many updates ago)), and all the cloth in other places (there is about 516 cloth on CH on Stalker mode, but it varies based on burned building RNG). Interloper does have more burned out buildings, so you do get less cloth then other modes, but there is still a LOT as you can see. And I'm not even including all the other places with cloth/scrap, just the biggest treasure troves.

*For bears, it's very hard to 1 shot kill them as you need to hit a very specific spot, but you can let them bleed out which is functionally the same thing as a 1 shot kill as long as you prevent yourself from being mauled while the bear runs around which isn't that difficult. Although if you hit them (or any animal but a rabbit) in the wrong area, the arrow will 'bounce off' and not cause bleeding, so I count that in 'occasional misses'.

*You can use a Hammer to break the fishing hole to preserve your more valuable tools. The hammer can be repaired with just Fir Firewood (and you can get 3 pieces of that only using 3% of an Improvised Hatchet so this is very efficient), and the only cost of limited resources is that 3% Hatchet Durability per 90% Hammer durability, and the approx 7.5% toolkit durability to repair that much, which is only about 1/4 of a piece of scrap metal. And since you only have to repair your toolkits once you are down to your last 2, and there are so many in the world even on Interloper, you can probably go thousands of days before you have to repair your toolkits anyways. So the amount of Scrap Metal you need to spend on tools to keep breaking open the fishing hole is basically negligible.

Now yeah, I'm oversimplifying, since you would kill SOME deer/wolves for pelts/safety, but like I said, not even including Broken Railroad saplings, and that isn't including supplementing your food supply with rabbit trapping to reduce the amount of hunting you need to do, or like I said, you could just allow exploiting starvation and then you literally could eat nothing but bear for well over 30000 days, and could easily live off rabbits forever (and that isn't even including fishing like I said).

So food isnt' even close to a limiting factor even before you get into 'risky' strats like stealing wolf kills to get free food.

Medicine obviously depends on how carefully you play (bandages are the limiting factor here, since they consume cloth; antiseptic can be replaced with antibiotics to treat the infection*). But like I said, there is a lot of cloth.

*Even without the Broken Railroad which I don't have numbers for, over 250 doses of Antibiotics are variable from ONLY reishi mushrooms (ie assuming you don't find a single dose of antibiotics from loot or they all decay before you can use them). And over 150 doses of OMB antiseptic. At least if you loot the entire world. Since not even every wolf attack causes the 'Blood Loss' condition, you would have to go through over 400 wolf struggles to actually run out of medicine (in which case I seriously have to question your competency as a long term run tends to be very safe and sedentary), and at that point the problem would be all the wasted cloth on bandages, not the medicine.

Firewood is easy. With Firestarting 5, and only making outdoor fires in wind-safe areas (caves, stoves, ect) to get the duration bonus, you need only a handful of sticks per day to cook food/boil water (obviously you stockpile tons of sticks for marathon sessions, but I am talking averaging it out over each day; you need about 4 sticks a day to cook meat* (again assuming no starvation so 3kg of meat a day) and about 4-6 more to boil water (water consumption depends heavily on how much walking/sprinting you do that day vs other activities), although this heavily varies based on the temperature you are cooking at which affects the fire duration bonus outdoors, and obviously assumes firestarting 5 for the 50% bonus as well). And coal respawns fairly quick in some locations. Even in the late game firewood isn't even close to a problem. 1 piece of coal would basically cover you for an entire day for example, and there are plenty of 'circuits' you can do on various maps that can gather you 80+ sticks in a single go, so even with them taking a few days to respawn later in the game, you will have enough firewood to live on.

*If you don't believe this number, keep in mind Firestarting 5 is a 50% bonus to duration, and then the outdoor duration bonus can go up VERY high as well, and they are multiplicative with each other, so with Cooking 5 cutting cooking time as well, you actually can pull this off in some cases if it's cold enough outside.

In terms of firestarting: you can make fire for free with the Magnifying lens, so you don't need to worry about a 'perma fire'. It's easy enough to do long boiling/cooking sessions (hint: exhaustion doesn't prevent you from doing this) to boil/cook enough water/food for 20+ days, so you don't have to worry too much about weather RNG for the lens, as you literally have 20 days for your next chance (you could cook longer term, but eventually meat will rot, so even with food poisoning immunity from Cooking 5 there is a practical limit of about 30 or so days you can prepare food in advance for). And even if you somehow get horribly unlucky and end up having to burn a match (and tbh in the late game you should have water stockpiled for literally hundreds of days as it doesn't spoil anyways and you have nothing better to do), there are over 150-200+ matches/firestriker charges/flares you can use to start a fire even on Interloper. So you would have to get extremely unlucky over 100 times which is astonishingly unlikely even over thousands of days (in my experience you get lens weather every 2-4 days even late game on Interloper).

Heck, even if you refused the use the lens completely for some reason, those 200 matches/flares/firestriker charges could last you 200*30 = 6000 days ON THEIR OWN if used conservatively. So running out of fire starting supplies isn't even close to a problem.

Edit: I completely forgot about tools. Basically, once you have Carcass Harvesting 5 (which isn't hard to get at all), all carcasses count as 'not frozen', so you can harvest anything by hand. Harvesting a hide by hand takes exactly the same amount of time as with an Improvised Knife (and you don't have any better tool on Interloper for this purpose), so you will always hand harvest hides on non frozen bodies, and like I said, all bodies are 'not frozen' at Carcass Harvesting 5. This already saves a lot of durability as harvesting the hide takes quite a bit of time and durability loss is based on harvesting time.

For harvesting the gut, yeah the knife is much faster, but you only need 1 gut per hide you collect and this only degrades the tool very slowly because it doesn't take that long. In the worst case, you can just mass farmrabbits and harvest their guts by hand indoors if you really are running low on gut and want to save tool durability. 

For harvesting meat, hand harvesting is an option, but is painfully slow (and quartering the carcass to harvest indoors still uses some durability, although this is actually still the most tool efficient method), so you would probably use the knife or hacksaw (hacksaw is slower on non frozen carcasses, but only by 25% compared to the Improvised Knife, and doesn't require cloth to repair (since you have to recraft the knife, and as shown by the numbers, Cloth is more of a concern then Scrap metal). You need tools to repair the hacksaw, but tools only degrade 2-3% per repair (25% on the hacksaw), and you can repair tools with another set of tools for 30% durability per scrap metal (last I checked, but that was a long time ago), so you only need a trivial amount of scrap metal to keep your tools to repair your hacksaw in good shape.

But all this talk of conserving scrap metal is pretty moot since as I said above, there is almost 1000 scrap metal just in the Dam/DP. While that is the bulk of the Scrap Metal in the game world, there is still quite a bit more. So you can easily keep at least your Hacksaw repaired (use Whetstones on the Knife early in the game, and then later in the game keep your Hatchet repaired with them for Wolf fighting) with just Scrap and use that for harvesting meat, use your hands for harvesting hides, and hand harvest gut from rabbits indoors. So running out of tools isn't really an issue either. Or you could just use the Knife, and use 2 Scrap and 1 Cloth for every knife (you can harvest 1 scrap from the knife, so it effectively only costs 2 to make another), but this is kind of wasteful on cloth.

I could go into more detail on tool durability loss (Improvised Tools lose durability much faster, and do more analysis on the exact harvesting rates with different methods meaning there is some reasoning/thinking involved in how to perfectly optimise, but like I said, it's honestly a moot point with how much Scrap Metal there is anyways), but this is already pretty long so I'll refrain. Sorry for being a bit vague in parts, but that is what happens when trying to summarise things.

Realistically you probably would run out of something eventually (because you wouldn't play perfectly, or hold on to 'luxuries' like extra clothing), but as you can see, even on Interloper, you can easily make it thousands of days, and your #1 enemy would be boredom (tbh I would feel bad for anyone who actually played a 5000+ day game), as after a certain point doing LITERALLY anything else with your time is going to be more interesting and only the most stubborn/persistent person would bother continuing. Which is why you don't actually see long Interloper runs even though they are 'easy' (just tedious): the early game is literally 50x more fun then the late game, so even if you want to keep playing this game, you are better off just restarting after the first 20-50 days on Interloper, esp if you are very experienced on the mode.

And yes it's ironic that I said I am 'briefly' going over this stuff. What I mean by this: I am not fully explaining all the strategy behind a super long term run and all the little tricks you would do, I mostly gloss over those parts or only vaguely talk about them. So there is some 'trust me I know' involved, which obviously isn't ideal when trying to make a point, which is why I don't consider this to be a full explanation/look at the subject.

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  • 5 weeks later...
54 minutes ago, Cattleman said:

Firestrikers wear out with use.

Magnifying lenses do not.
If you guys are talking about a theoretical limit - I don't think there is one. Food, water and fire are infinite, and in principle there is no guarantee that at any point you'd get frostbite or ill or eaten by wolves.

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30 minutes ago, kurja said:

Magnifying lenses do not.
If you guys are talking about a theoretical limit - I don't think there is one. Food, water and fire are infinite, and in principle there is no guarantee that at any point you'd get frostbite or ill or eaten by wolves.

Yes I agree that there is no real limit in theory... But for the ultra long haul games I would really like to be able to craft some type of Primative fire starter that could be used inside and outside with only a raging blizzard completely preventing it from working outside... In my opinion a bow drill would be the best option if it used calories and stamina, in a close second would be a fire plow. Yet again if it used calories and stamina, even more so than the bow drill as this takes much more energy and time. Also these would be practically impossible to succeed with at a low fire starting skill level (say maybe a 25%  chance until fire skill is at level 3, then a 40% OR 50% until level 5 which would give something like a 70% chance of success). Both of these items would wear out but could be repaired or crafted again, many people have mentioned flint and steel but these would require a very rare ore to be added to the game. And contrary to belief they do wear out with use.

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  • 8 months later...

There is pretty much to finite limit on resources. Beachcombing (how ever profitable) nets you cloth, saplings, scrap, both pills, reclaimed wood, matches. Snares always return the wood when salvaged. At full firestarting the magnifying glass can always be used with clear skies. The only real unavoidable killer is murphy's law.

(p.s sorry for the necro)

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 8/13/2017 at 8:56 PM, Troxism said:

...you need only a handful of sticks per day to cook food/boil water (obviously you stockpile tons of sticks for marathon sessions, but I am talking averaging it out over each day; you need about 4 sticks a day to cook meat* (again assuming no starvation so 3kg of meat a day) and about 4-6 more to boil water ...

the entire write-up was good and this was especially valuable to me.

 

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