Question Thread :: Milton Mailbag

[JeremiahJohnson]

Absolutely excited for this new update and future projects! Thank you for putting in so much work. Might be an odd question but are you planning on adding Male and Female animals? (Deer/Moose without antlers) As well as younger animals. (Mother bear watching over cubs, younger deer, etc) I was also wondering if the blood tracking will be worked on? The animals seem to only drop a very small amount of blood for a bullet, arrow, knife or hatchet wounds. Thanks again for working so hard to get us these chapters and more survival content. Looking forward to see what Great Bear will throw at us next????

Edited November 11, 2018 by JeremiahJohnson

[codfish107]

Looking forward to the Dec update!

1) Any ideas or plans to do more with the food system? I know the cooking system has been changed (which i personally like), but are there any plans to make food/hunger more than just counting calories? Maybe adding a nutrient system of some kind? Even when i wasn't starving myself for the Don't Starve Achievement on stalker, i felt that most of the food i had was useless, it was just the hoarder in me that made me grab it anyways.

2) Any plans to add a region that's almost all urban like Timber Wolf Mountain is almost all wilderness (maybe a city, harbor, or airport)? I know Desolation Point and Mountain Town are fairly urban, but i feel like it they have a decent wilderness to them still.

Thanks

Edited November 11, 2018 by codfish107

[Dan_]

From the spear picture, it's easy to recognize which fireplace that one is, though I won't spoil. 

Will that building interior be reset with the update? Meaning, are the supplies from my survival saves in that building safe? 

[Amazombie]

You mentioned maybe being able to do something with bones. I'd love to be able to make fishing hooks with them as well as use them for sewing like regular fish hooks now. Any chance we will ever see a pull sled of any type to help with base moves? Another add that would be very nice would be maybe foxes and large snares to get them? 

In any event, love this game. Thanks for all you guys/gals hard work! 

[Alonzo.]

Are there any books out there similar to the game that you could suggest?

Thank you.

[Ape88]

I know that long term survival was never the goal for the game and that the sandbox was originally meant to be just a testing ground for the story mode, but is there any chance we might see the ability to find and/or create whetstones?

I do love playing survival whilst I await story mode to be adjusted.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Ape88

[William]

When will the custom settings for wildlife-struggle be fixed ? I thought I found  the Holy Grail in these settings and then they dont work... found it out after being killed by a wolf instantly after ~8 days, despite "Struggle condition lost" set to none. Its frustrating for me getting instantly killed by a wolf - often times it was not preventable. I like them to be a threat but not to be the Grim Reaper(insant death sentence).

[Ape88]

15 hours ago, Ape88 said:

I know that long term survival was never the goal for the game and that the sandbox was originally meant to be just a testing ground for the story mode, but is there any chance we might see the ability to find and/or create whetstones?

I do love playing survival whilst I await story mode to be adjusted.

I meant to say, natural whetstones. Clearly we can find some man made ones in game...

[Smellyfries]

These are 3 separate posts i made, but i decided to simply put them in one to save you guys some trouble.

You can only appear to see those skills when you are in the repair, clean, or sharpen menu of an object; will we be able to see those skills in the skill tree under like a misc section of the skill tree in the journal?

I've noticed that many houses have dog food, meaning that they possibly owned a dog. Did the dogs during the quiet Apocalypse join the pack of wolves due to the death or abandonment of their owners?

• Will Hushed River Valley get a Nomad Destination?

Edited November 12, 2018 by Smellyfries
Spelling Error, Spacing Error, and other things.

[WildGPS]

Hello Hinterland!

I know that the end of season 1 is a long ways down the road yet, but I'm curious whether you are currently leaning more towards doing TLD: Season Two (same engine, same mechanics, new story), TLD2 (updated engine, updated mechanics), or brand new IP unrelated to The Long Dark once you are all wrapped up with Episode 5?

Thanks for taking the time to respond, your community appreciates it greatly!

[StrayCat]

Hello,

In last Milton mailbag, you said : "I don't think the vision has changed as the audience as broadened. It's also possible to balance things out by introducing new risks -- we may focus on giving you new toys to play with, but then we can also bring in new things to toy with you."

Do you have plans to add new features to threaten the player's life ? Every threat is now well known : appart from [thirst, cold, exhaustion and hunger], we have diseases, blizzards, wolves & bears. The last addition was the moose (& broken ribs), but that wasn't an exclusively negative one, as we finally hunt them for their meat and hide, and we can choose to leave them alone for safety. On the opposite, we get no benefit from blizzards (except for no wildlife), it is no more than a threat we have to manage. Do you plan to add more of this kind of threat, thrown at our faces with only "hey, deal with it or die" ?

[okapi]

I was busy near Halloween (and died once) and missed the 4 days of night event, which seemed really fun! 

My question is, will I be able to try again next Halloween to get those badges? I really want to get the badges... 

I'm on PS4.

[Serenity]

4 hours ago, StrayCat said:

On the opposite, we get no benefit from blizzards (except for no wildlife)

Blizzards replenish sticks

[yollarbenibekler]

Hello Hinterland! I'm Cem and I'm from Istanbul. Thanks for this wonderful masterpiece.

I'm the proud owner of the game since 2014 and I'm amazed by the development which has gone positively day by day. 

The thing is: I want to donate more. I know for some, it is harsh but I think a dlc would boost your finances up and cheer the people up who want to donate more. Do you ever consider putting an extra region as a DLC in future? You can do it via kickstarter and when you achieve the goal; you can just add it to the main game for free if this donation demand is not accepted widely. There are still people who want to help you. And I want to see the world grow.

 

Thanks!

Edited November 13, 2018 by yollarbenibekler

[ilynrot]

Hey guys,

first of all I absolutely love The Long Dark. Thank  you guys so much for making such a wonderful game. My question is about the achievement "Skilled Survivor". I am usually not someone to chase achievements in games but since The Long Dark is one of my all time favorite games I really wanna complete all achievements. The problem with this particular one is the fact that it needs every skill on lvl 5. I play Interloper only and I guess i might not be the only person doing so. This obviously means I will never get lvl. 5 with the rifle. It feels like I am getting punished for playing the most challenging version of the game. Also it´s not like I can switch over into another difficulty and just quickly get the achievement. Getting all skills to lvl. 5 takes quiet a long time and it would force me into playing a version of the game I don´t really enjoy (no offense to anyone here, I just love running for my life when it´s  -45 on the first day) for hours and hours.  Would it be possible to slightly adjust the achievement for interloper only players ? Either to remove the rifle skill in interloper completly or maybe build in the execption for interloper difficulty? I have no clue about anything when it comes to developing a video game but I really hope that this problem can be solved with an easy fix.  Again I would´t mind changing the game mode for a few hours to get a specific achievement but the time investment it takes to get "Skilled Survivor" and the fact that it is impossible to get in interloper is making me desperate enough to pose this question here.

Still keep up all the good work. So much love for developing this amazing game.

[UTC-10]

Is there any consideration to expanding the cooking utensils? While the cooking pot is great... when  you find one, it is disappointing to go through a region like Coastal Highway, explore all the houses, and not find one.

Maybe a less durable, lighter pot, i.e. lightweight aluminum, which takes some damage with ordinary use, a lot of damage if meat is burned or water boiled away, and repairable by tool kit and scrap metal? If having it poses a problem, maybe make it 1 liter in capacity (still fits a fish of any size and a kilo of meat).

Maybe see if a work-around for New cooking can be worked out where the player can find or fashion say a pan (frying pan?) which allows twice the amount of meat/fish to be cooked BUT forces the player to hover over the fire with a much shorter margin once cooked (can use one pan per cooking surface) i.e. you really don't go do something else that will take time. I find that I have made use of the in-between time to get more raw meat, deposit cooked meat outside or place it out of the way, get more sticks from stores, and the tuned (shortened) cooking times really helped, but I otherwise might spend a lot of time staring at the fire anyway. Maybe not workable, but a thought.

If nothing else, maybe (inline with requests to "clean up a table" for example), how about allowing conversion by player action of say a metal pail to a metal bucket that can be used to melt snow and boil water in larger quantities? It can be heavy and not something routinely carried around. I realize that changing stuff can be hard but thought I'd ask.

I asked a lot, answer what is reasonable. Thanks.

 

[Korlis]

In the film The Hateful Eight, the characters prep for a coming blizzard by rigging up stakes and a line to mark the path between the cabin they're holding out in and a nearby outhouse and barn. Could something like that be implemented in The Long Dark? We can leave markers like stones or used flares, but a taller, more visible object would be useful, especially if it was possible to string line between them. Basically, it's for when I get lost between the camp office or garage and nearby fishing holes in a blizzard or at night...

Also, The Thing has come up in mailbag responses before, but are there any other films that have inspired the game and/or have possible mechanics you'd like to crib?

Edited November 13, 2018 by Korlis
Amended question

[musrass]

Is there a chance in the future we can have the ability to make notes in our maps? Maybe at expense of another charcoal? After surviving for a while it would be great to leave reminders to yourself (where you left certain items for instance). I know I can write things in my log, but I think it makes sense to do that directly in the map.

Thanks for doing the Milton Mailbag! – And for this great game!!!

[Forogueman]

In the august dev diary you said, that in episode three we will be "exploring a new region". Will it be a totally new region, that isn't in the game yet, or will it be an existing region, that we haven't yet seen through the eyes of the story mode?

[Admin]

Remember to keep these as questions for @Raphael van Lierop . If you can direct someone to an answer that he's given in a previous mailbag, then please do so. Please however try to avoid answering other people's questions.

[greatwhitegamer]

Who voiced Jeremiah, Gray Mother, Methuselah (am I spelling that correctly?) and Mathis in Wintermute?   

[galenwolfe]

I really enjoy the game, but one of the things that has always been off putting in the experience is the random "you've sprained something". I understand that people slip and fall but there are times that it seems the character is actually jonesing for meds rather than actually getting hurt. And then other times when nothing at all happens for long stretches. But, what really is off putting, is the lack of any sort of stumbling/tripping/falling animation. That, ac tually is my main complaint. I don't mind the rest, but at least make some sort of animation where the camera nose plants in the snow and then show the camera looking at the hand or leg that the sprain happened on... and if it happened to two limbs, then pick one. This would resolve a great deal of my angst towards the whole random injury system if it actually showed that you did something to get the injury, not just "ah... oh god, that smarts" with no actual visual trigger. Your wrist just doesn't sprain itself while you're walking along. You hit something, you fell, SOMETHING happened. Is something like this at all forthcoming with the new additions to your development team?

[jahhat]

1. In the new survival mode game I randomly spawned somewhere in the Great Bear Island, and i'm just curious where is the Will Mackenzie's plane or debris, which should be nearby in this case?
2. Seems you will add a region with a flight strip and planes, so, will we able to fly away from Great Bear Island or Aurora won’t let us go?

[Faithful Cartographer]

1. Will there be a development Diary about the survival mode update in December?

2. Redux episodes one, two and survival mode update coming out at about the same time?

[paulrysavy]

I have some questions, something from the point of view of game realism.

My first ’what if’ question. What if camp fire had some degrade time like Snow shelter, and/of could be destroyed. During play many times we use camp fire to warm up carcasses, and with time this camp fires are stay there, or we put down a camp fire start a fire, and bugs. It would be good to handle more flexible the camp fires.

My second what if question is, what if we could open MRE packs like quarter packs ( it would contain a foodpac, tea, coffee, matches, 2 painkiller ). I think the game mechanic of quarter packs could be a good start to develop it. And from the from the point of view of game realism some times it would be life sawing.

Thanks