On super long Survival Runs, what lack of resource has killed you?


Jigsawn

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I will probably never bother trying to do a 500 or 1000 day survival run (although never say never...). However I know a lot of you on here do. 

I was wondering what eventually kills you from a resource point of view on non-Interloper difficulties. Assuming that you are good at surviving the usual threats - animals, weather and health needs, then presumably it's running out of resources that will eventually doom you in the long run.

I am guessing that being unable to create fire is probably the nail in the coffin, I know people on high difficulties say matches are one of the most important resources. After you use all the matches, magnifying glasses and firestrikers in the world, that means no more fire, right? The only way I could think of you to have ever-lasting fire when those run out, is to keep a constant fire going (just like the caveman days), and never let it go out. But even with this tactic it would probably eventually go out due to interruption in fuel supply, your character being forced elsewhere, weather, etc. 

Clothing is the other thing that springs to mind, once cloth runs out for repairs then you'd be down to making new animal-crafted gear, each time the old ones got raggy enough. That in itself could become life-threatening once your current clothes start falling apart. And hunting generally requires weapons, hatchets, knives etc, not to mention sewing kits/fishing lines to craft the gear. All of which require metal, which although abundant will eventually run out.

Obviously running out of any resource can potentially kill you (what if you get ill or injured and have used up all the medicinal stuff in the world?). I would love to hear from you folks who got to the super-late game and started to drain the world of its resources. 

PS - Final thought, presumably there is no way to infinitely survive on Stalker difficulty because resources eventually run out and everything eventually decays? Or in theory is there a way to do it?

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indefinite survival is possible thanks to beachcombing. you can get the scrap, cloth, and saplings you need that way. in regards to fire, the mag lens doesn't run out. i've heard it's possible it can break in an animal attack, but i've never seen it happen.

i'm actually doing a "late game challenge" at the moment, where i'm only allowed to get scrap, cloth, saplings, and meds from beachcombing. i'm also pretending that the inside of every building has been fully looted, so I can't break down wood or anything else down indoors. any items that could realistically run out late game(sewing kits, flares, flare gun, matches, cat tails, etc) i'm not using. it's tough and requires a lot of planning to make good use of mag lens opportunities, but it's definitely a viable indefinite survival strategy. if I had to guess what will eventually kill me, I would likely go with wolves. this strategy requires regular travel between coastal highway and desolation point, and while I'm careful to avoid wolf spawns, I know that eventually one will pop up around a blind corner or hill, and without the flare gun or matches to start a scare fire, he will eventually get me.

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Thanks, that's interesting. So random stuff gets washed up/spawned on the beaches of Coastal Highway/Desolation Point over time? I never noticed. I also didn't know the magnifying glass doesn't break - I actually have one which was at 30% when I picked it up, so I assumed it would lose condition fairly quickly. I've hardly used it because I am lighting fires indoors and in crap weather. So I commend your effort to rely solely on the glass, you must have to do an epic fire whenever you use it to boil, cook, warm up etc. 

Do we know what the longest run anyone has so far is? I quite like that you can potentially survive forever, it will be hard like you say, but possible. I guess on Interloper the weather eventually gets so bad that its very hard to survive long enough to think about beachcombing or relying on magnifying glass fires.

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1 hour ago, Jigsawn said:

Thanks, that's interesting. So random stuff gets washed up/spawned on the beaches of Coastal Highway/Desolation Point over time? I never noticed. I also didn't know the magnifying glass doesn't break - I actually have one which was at 30% when I picked it up, so I assumed it would lose condition fairly quickly. I've hardly used it because I am lighting fires indoors and in crap weather. So I commend your effort to rely solely on the glass, you must have to do an epic fire whenever you use it to boil, cook, warm up etc. 

Do we know what the longest run anyone has so far is? I quite like that you can potentially survive forever, it will be hard like you say, but possible. I guess on Interloper the weather eventually gets so bad that its very hard to survive long enough to think about beachcombing or relying on magnifying glass fires.

Someone recently posted a message to the devs asking about a special acknowledgement for someone who had past 10 years on a vanilla interloper survival run.  I haven't verified the information myself, but the post was moved to the archives by the admins and can be found there.  I do know for sure that there have been a few Interloper runs that have exceeded 500 days.

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That video's crazy. I like the carpet of pelts! 

I can understand the boredom argument, heck I get bored as soon as I feel I'm in a strong position in the game (geared up, food sources secured, etc). Then it's exploration that drives me but once you've explored the world it must get very grindy unless the game throws a curveball at you.

It's one of the reasons I'd like a endgame Survival mode where the goal is to survive for X hundred days. Then they can put in balancers like the increasingly bad weather to make things really extreme as you near the end of your goal, instead off this "safety" state that its not too hard to reach in the mid/endgame on most difficulties. The best fun part of the game is usually the first part, struggling to survive and driven forwards by the need for food or loot or crafting.

I've been finding Stalker a bit too generous on the loot front in my past few runs so I've started a custom game with Interloper generic low loot values and High worsening weather - I'm hoping that will make the loot game a bit harder

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@OSMAN on the Steam forums posted his 10 year vanilla loper run.   https://steamcommunity.com/app/305620/discussions/0/1795152172938512542/

I'm currently running a 1400+ day vanilla Loper run and have thought long and hard about the possibility of indefinite survival. In short, yes it is possible; albeit, very hard to maintain "easy living"

Supplies are not an issue but finite resources like cloth, metal, birch and maple all will eventually expire. Yes beach combing can offer goodies once in a while but in very late game, I suspect the frequency of goodies would be more like finding a paper money in your pocket; great when you find it but 20 bucks wont get you far. 

Given the scenario of no more resources, it means no more hunting with a bow and no more fishing. The only solution semi-reliable solution I see is SNARES. I generally do not use reclaimed wood specifically because its non-renewable. Rather, I'm currently making snares for all my way point caches which generally have bunnies. At present, I'm collecting the meat and leaving it for late, late game....that is if I make it. Now this takes advantage of the LVL5 cooking but imo, if its known by the devs and remains in the game (...due to the complexity or removing), I say use it until an alternative comes about (fingers crossed for smokehouse). 

In theory, I can still follow my way point circuit and have enough food to recover from transitions, etc. One caveat is you need a lot of rabbit to fill you up and respawn rates may not allow for bunnies to repopulate quickly enough to sustain easy to moderate survival. The advantage to snares is harvesting gives you back the reclaimed wood. Surviving even for 100 days gives you enough gut to resnare. 

Other long term survivors reference the addition of new areas to acquire resources which is of course a boon to your game but again, isnt a reliable method of continuing long term living. 

I've really thought about this scenario for quite some time and the snare is the only thing I can think of to maintain survivability but I could be missing something...

One final thought, BOREDOM is definitely the hidden defining factor to long term living. I have fallen asleep IRL only to wake in time to watch my character walk off a cliff. For this long run, I only play in spurts and if I'm ever feeling remotely sleepy, I pull out my sleeping bag and take a snooze. 

I'm certainly not at 10 years but if anyone has questions, I may be able to answer. 

Happy surviving!

 

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Reddit had a player that hit 2000 days on voyager a few years back when there were only three regions (he died shortly after the release of desolation point) and he was fairly well stocked but critical of his over use of matches earlier in the run. 

Has anyone checked out the 10k interloper run? I don't mean to sound skeptical and I believe it absolutely "possible" to survive that long but, well, I guess I am a bit skeptical.  One of the reasons the leader boards were taken down ages ago is the number of hours/days survived was artificially inflated via tweaks in the game's files.  Again I'm not saying it can't be done but I am a bit skeptical.  I had a +800 day run before the save game wipe a while and it can be insanely boring at times.  A 10k run is unfathomable to me almost ...  I can't read the steam discussion from work so I'm curious what everyone's opinions are about the situation. 

Edit: Just read it on my phone. Wow, seems legit. That's some dedication right there.  

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I've had some long Voyageur runs over 200 days and some saves wiped during updates but never made 500 days even after putting in over a 1000 hours on the game over 4 years. I find complacency is my enemy  on the long runs. Running back to the camp office in a blizzard and getting wolfed. Falling asleep in a bearskin bedroll in a fishing hut and freezing to death, and recently stepping into a fire by accident with 25% health.  2 days before this blunder I got hypothermia following a wolf blood trail to retrieve an arrow. You get to a point that  your resources are pretty good and if you are smart you could easily go longer but you need that bit of risk to keep the game interesting and then when you overcome something you relax a bit and do some stupid shit I must say. So I think if you played it real safe you could last a long long time but what usually ends up happening is " I'm bored of this run , I think I'll start a new one" so some runs you never know how long you could have gone and what resources you would run out of. 

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