Manual saves

[peteloud]

What percentage of players at Stalker and Interloper level manually backup their saves and restore them after being killed ?

[Doc Feral]

That's dirty. I did it sometimes back in the nineties with other single-save games, in case I messed up. Now I don't.

(silently cursing at the sinful cheater who brought temptation gnawing at my soul)

[Mixxut]

For me that ruins the point of the game, so I don't use it and can't understand what is the point of playing survival mode if you just  reload your saves

 

Edit: Of course you can do whatever you want, it's just my opinion ;P

[Carbon]

Now, now. People bought the game and they're free to do what they want. Let's not turn this into a divisive thread (despite the potential!). The OP is asking a specific question and that isn't how you feel about the idea.

 I only backup my Stalker saves before an update, and then only in case something goes wrong. I don't restore them if all is well afterwards. I don't typically play a high-risk game; quite conservative in my decisions and always opt for safety over speed or convenience.

 So, no, I don't backup for the purpose the OP described.

[Doc Feral]

It may help when going for long term achievements such as upgading all skills to the max, living off the land or something like that.

[Kaisentlaia]

I don't hunt for skills or achievements so I never backup. I used to do that when I just started playing the game, then I noticed it was ruining the fun for me so I stopped. Now I backup and restore saves only if I'm testing some bug, otherwise I play permadeath and I love it. 

[jerry486]

After each longer session I make backups. This is not to cheat and restart, but glitches, falling out of maps, getting stuck or being killed by a random wall of death - these things do happen and if I consider that I was killed by a buggy game I will revert to the copy.

[TerribleSurvivor]

3 hours ago, peteloud said:

What percentage of players at Stalker and Interloper level manually backup their saves and restore them after being killed ?

I back my safe files up since the character reset bug was reported occuring since last patch. But i delete them once i die in a run! Cheating feels filthy and ruins the game for me!

[Meat]

I sync all of my data 3 times/week to 3 external drives but the thought of restoring one of my saves from these backups hadn't even occurred to me until reading this thread.

But no, I'm not going to fall into temptation. I'm going to play the game the way it was meant to be played.

[stratvox]

I like the permadeath. Right now I'm exploring HRV with my ~385 day survivor. It makes me very cautious about overextending myself. My basic plan has been; establish resources at the HRV end of the cave that leads to MT. Go exploring, knowing I can run back and water and food up if necessary. Get me to a cave, and then establish resources there (food water & firewood). Once I have a nice supply there, go looking for the next one. Lather, rinse, repeat, so that when something goes down (wolf struggle, blizzard blows in, etc) I am able to beat a hasty retreat to somewhere safe where I can rest and heal up.

I also tend to do hunting around each forward base so I can also get a stockpile going of rabbit deer and bear hides and guts so I can repair my clothing as needed. Saplings go in the backs of the caves to cure, and when I decide to return to my first forward base at the end of the MT<->HRV cave it's simplicity to load up and get back to the crafting table at the Trailer in MT so I can replenish my bows and arrows and clothes as necessary.

If I were to simply restore saves I'd be just out romping knowing that when I screw the pooch I can just revert and do it again. Having permadeath on a long-term survivor like that means that I will be properly cautious about the risks he takes while exploring the new region.

And and as an aside... I've been doing the vast majority of my cooking out in caves and all the people whining about the cooking system haven't given it the thought it truly requires. Throw on a 2L pot of snow and a kilo of venison, then repair clothing while it all comes together. If I'm looking for a little variety and have a can of soup or peaches or some such, just place it close to the fire and it'll open up and start heating up... and can't overcook. Tea, coffee, mushroom/berry tea, soup, peaches etc... get hot and stay hot so when I'm ready to amble out in the cold I can load up on those and their warming bonuses before heading out the door.

[Cr41g]

I cloud backup to PSN after a long session in case of game crashes... which in my opinion have lessened considerably for me.. but I like permadeath and starting over

[SneakySquid]

385 day run !!?

 

[stratvox]

More than that now. I'm in HRV in the Lake Cave by Watchful Falls up in HRV:

I've been at it for a few more days since I posted that:

There are some seriously killer views up here. Here's looking out the cave around sunset:

Move around to the Pensive Lookout for this early morning view:

And you can spiderman your way surprisingly far out the cliff near the rope climb down from the Pensive Lookout:

Here's the stats page; as you can see I've tramped around quite a bit of the world now on this run.

Yeah, I'm playing Voyageur. I like the wildlife density, and really like the wolf density. Stalker has wolves all over the freakin' place... it's annoying. I think I'd really like a mode with Voyageur wildlife, maybe even Pilgrim wildlife with awareness set way out to make hunting harder, not a lot of loot, very plentiful natural resources, tools rifles etc at about Voyageur levels, all the afflictions (i.e. parasites), fairly cold weather and a solid blizzard frequency. To be fair, having the wolves attack you once you get the means to deal with it effectively (Archer 3, basically) is sort of like delivering emergency rations to you.