Just wondering, whats the best way to search ?


Kaiservadin

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Just be sure you have a routine you follow, to ensure you don't miss places. Try to look in, under and behind every item you can, because there can be things tucked away in unusual places at times. Partly open cupboard doors are such a place. Sometimes there are things in there that you won't notice unless you're in the right position. Be sure to check under the seats of boats. There may be items underneath crates or pallets that you won't ever see unless you break them down..

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Yeah, the crates one is annoying. There are a few crates in the game that ALWAYS have stuff under them, and then others that NEVER do. The only way to really know is to break them down. If possible save first....in the event it was a waste of time you can just reload. I always check crates and boxes last after looting everything obvious and then saving my game.

The crates in the Forlorn Muskeg Spence Farmstead specifically have stuff in several of them. Also behind the crates directly under the bed is a safe you have to crack.

For looting in general do one room at a time, from top to bottom, and in both directions. The top to bottom is important because they sometimes put items up high on top of things....like storm lanterns. They also like to hide stuff under things like couches, chairs, beds, etc. Going around the room from both directions lets you see items behind something from the other side. For instance they sometimes like to put can openers next to toasters or microwaves, but on the side you are not facing when entering the kitchen....so you have to check the other side of everything. I don't often find things in the partially opened cabinets, or in open drawers that you can't search....but it is possible so I try to look inside anything and everything possible.

In summary they do a VERY good job of hiding loot. You really need to check EVERYWHERE and keep your eyes peeled....

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I also go around the room a few times, check under every table, couch, chair, inside every crate, and also every surface (beds sometimes also have loot on them, not always easily visible, and most workbenches have hooks and lines on them that are near invisible).

Still I often have the feeling I must be missing something, but maybe I'm just unlucky. Hunting knives especially seem to be rare for me, and on my current 40-day pilgrim run which I started in CH and then moved to ML, I still haven't found one. I hope the prepper's cache with hunting supplies is there because that's almost my last hope, although there's a few places in ML I haven't checked (like the logging trailers).

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Enter building.  Quit.  Resume.  When the save is restored it maintains all sorts of additional stuff lying about.  When played live much of that stuff vanishes less than a second after you close the door.  I don't know why...

And if you want you can search every container before you quit so you know which ones to check when you restart.  There is a dice roll everytime you open a container from restored data that determines whether the item is still there or not (and another to determine condition).  But its always the same item.  And if its missing that time you can just restore again...

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52 minutes ago, selfless said:

Enter building.  Quit.  Resume.  When the save is restored it maintains all sorts of additional stuff lying about.  When played live much of that stuff vanishes less than a second after you close the door.  I don't know why...

And if you want you can search every container before you quit so you know which ones to check when you restart.  There is a dice roll everytime you open a container from restored data that determines whether the item is still there or not (and another to determine condition).  But its always the same item.  And if its missing that time you can just restore again...

This has GOT to be some kind of uncommon bug. I have tried and tried and tried to reproduce your claims of this behavior in the game, and cannot. I've tied multiple different buildings, on every single difficulty, and have NEVER seen this happen. I've never seen an extra item in the open, and I've never seen ANYTHING in the containers change from one to the next. 

I am in no way trying to discredit your claims, as I'm intimately familiar with having things happen to me in this game that no one else, or very few others are experiencing. (RNG, I'm looking at YOU) But, I've read the post about this, and seen the lamentations of players who think the game is unplayable because of it, when they didn't even realize it was happening( and indeed, perhaps was not).  I just feel like you ought to offer a disclaimer that this may not be affecting everyone, because it isn't, and I feel like you're leading people to believe they are being cheated out of loot, when in fact, the "second" load may be adding things that shouldnt be there. Your screen shots show a virtual lootapalooza, that would be a bounty even on pilgrim mode, so I am hard pressed to believe the extra loot "should" have been there to begin with.

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2 hours ago, selfless said:

Enter building.  Quit.  Resume.  When the save is restored it maintains all sorts of additional stuff lying about.  When played live much of that stuff vanishes less than a second after you close the door.  I don't know why...

And if you want you can search every container before you quit so you know which ones to check when you restart.  There is a dice roll everytime you open a container from restored data that determines whether the item is still there or not (and another to determine condition).  But its always the same item.  And if its missing that time you can just restore again...

I've had bad luck with this method several times....it seems mostly bad involving locked lockers. On live playthroughs I've had every locked locker contain three interesting items a piece. Upon doing the reload trick, even after reloading up to 20 times, I have only been able to get up to half the locked lockers to contain three items, and then the other half remain empty.

I've had the best luck saving before entering a big loot building (like the dam, or the CH gas station, etc), obviously you save when you enter, and then I save after looting everything the first time, before playing around with my saves. I save after looting everything the first time,  because like I said if I just reload the last save after entering the building I seem to get far less loot the second (and third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and so on) time around.

This seems to directly contradict someone who made another thread about more loot appearing out in the open when immediately reloading. I forget who started that other thread, but if it's you I suggest you collect more data about what's INSIDE the lootable containers (especially locked lockers) when searching live the first time. 

Losing three items per locked locker, for up to half the locked lockers present may be a poor trade off for a few additional odds and ends appearing out in the open.

I'd start making some saves before going inside places with locked lockers. Playing with the save outside the building can also alter how many lockers are locked and how many are not....the more locked lockers the better.....generally.....

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@TROY It's my special routine.  If it doesn't work for you, ???

@Thrasador I've tried to be clear.  Objects out in the open and containers are very different.  The stuff out in the open seems to increase when restoring from save data.  The stuff that's in containers instead gets randomly deleted.  And its only the save that's made immediately after creation of an area.

And no, it's no a one-for-one swap.  The stuff out in the open shows all the same extra stuff every time the game is reloaded.  All of it.  The stuff in the containers depends on the instance; sometimes none of it gets deleted, sometimes all, or any of the possible permutations thereof.  What I have never seen is a container be empty during the live search suddenly have something inside when reloaded.  If it starts empty, it stays empty.  And if it had a newspaper in it, it will only ever have a newspaper in it.  Or it won't.  But it never comes up "sheets of paper".  Or "candy bar".  Or anything else.

And to be further clear, the stuff out in the open does not seem to be added.  Rather, it disappears from view the instant play begins.  I have seen many items lying on countertops or shelves within view of a door suddenly vanish on me when I first enter a space, only to have the exact same item then be returned to the exact placement after a quit/restore but now it stays and now I get to pick it up.  If its intended to be an editing out of some items, its a poor one.  And since it happens just as much on Pilgrim as it does Interloper, I think it's not.  If its intended to be a randomization feature, its a poor one.  The last comment I got from the PR department was that it might be.  But why bother inventing some new kind of randomizer when all you have to do is reiterate the room generation subroutine to get a fresh room?  It is weird and I don't like it.

Happy hunting.

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2 hours ago, selfless said:

What I have never seen is a container be empty during the live search suddenly have something inside when reloaded.  If it starts empty, it stays empty.  And if it had a newspaper in it, it will only ever have a newspaper in it.  Or it won't.  But it never comes up "sheets of paper".  Or "candy bar".  Or anything else.

I have.

That's mostly true. Many containers that are empty on the first pass are ALWAYS empty no matter what. Sometimes a few of them may have just been empty on the first pass, or the second, or third....but eventually if you are persistent some of them had things too. They were just empty at first. It's fairly rare though, and you have to be particularly persistent. I have reloaded many lootable buildings over ten times, some over twenty. I had a refrigerator in a coastal house in CH that was empty 90% of the time when reloading....but about every 10th reload it had a condensed milk and a soda. It wasn't worth it though, because of the other things that happened to be empty when that finally came around to having something in it....like the box of herbal tea in one cabinet and a can of coffee in another.

What I have definitely noticed is oftentimes the first pass has the most full things all at the same time. Trying to get everything full again plus the additional things that are sometimes full is almost impossible, if not impossible.

That's why I prefer to save games before even entering buildings now. Waiting until after you enter is very limiting. 

I saved outside the BR warehouse on that cot and went in there over 10 times trying to get a prybar to spawn in there. After about 10 times FINALLY one spawned on the floor of the truck with no doors. Luckily on that spawn almost every locker was also locked and had good stuff in it. I had to give up a heavy hammer in a red tool chest and a parka on a bench to get it though...but it was probably a good trade. I didn't have a prybar yet and a lot of those lockers are consistently locked....

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Personally, I find that light can make a huge difference, to searching inside. But that's also a waste of resources! So, I tend to go around without the use of a lamp or torch, and find everything I can, especially opening every container. Once I've finished all that searching, I'll do one more sweep, with my lantern lit. I've found some really important stuff that I've missed that way (stray bullets, most importantly)!

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Depending where I am searching.... In a group of buildings daytime I'm fine, night or Dawn dusk I make a big fire pull several torches extinguish each right away then start search with last one. Go thru buildings lighting new torches as needed from dying ones.   If I know one or more have fireplaces or stoves I can light a new fire from twigs with burning torches to make more torches 

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12 hours ago, cullam said:

Personally, I find that light can make a huge difference, to searching inside. But that's also a waste of resources! So, I tend to go around without the use of a lamp or torch, and find everything I can, especially opening every container. Once I've finished all that searching, I'll do one more sweep, with my lantern lit. I've found some really important stuff that I've missed that way (stray bullets, most importantly)!

This is my system too... Though I don't really find bullets to be particularly valuable since I use the bow mostly but things like whetstones, can openers, pills, sewing kits, matches, and ferro rods are some of the particularly valuable things that you can miss if you don't have a light when searching.

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Another easily missed location.. inside the drawers of open filing cabinets (and other drawers too, for that matter). Just because you can't click on them to search doesn't necessarily mean they're empty. Get up close and look inside them.

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1 minute ago, JAFO said:

Another easily missed location.. inside the drawers of open filing cabinets (and other drawers too, for that matter). Just because you can't click on them to search doesn't necessarily mean they're empty. Get up close and look inside them.

I don't know if I even want to know how much I've missed by not thinking of this! LOL I have never done that. If it's open, I've always just passed by/on. What a waste! Thank you.

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1 minute ago, CitrinePeridot said:

I don't know if I even want to know how much I've missed by not thinking of this!

You're not the only one.. I only realised about the filing cabinets a couple of days ago myself, when watching an old GrayStillPlays Interloper run.

I hate to think how much gear I've missed out on.

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On 31.8.2017 at 4:38 AM, cullam said:

Personally, I find that light can make a huge difference, to searching inside. But that's also a waste of resources! So, I tend to go around without the use of a lamp or torch, and find everything I can, especially opening every container. Once I've finished all that searching, I'll do one more sweep, with my lantern lit. I've found some really important stuff that I've missed that way (stray bullets, most importantly)!

that's exactly how I do it too - nice, fewer words to type :D

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