Reflections on Interloper

[cekivi]

19 hours ago, mystifeid said:

.

In a sandbox, of all things, apparently produced by one third of an already small team and that still has the word Alpha attached to it (not RC or even Beta), it's scary that I now have 1k hours logged. With over 200 games and 11 years on Steam this is only the third title to reach that mark. I'm not sure whether to thank Hinterland or curse them. One thing is certain - they're pretty good at what they do.

Congrats on 1000 hours @mystifeid! 

You've earned this ->

 

[KD7BCH]

Congrats on hitting the 1000 hours club!

[mystifeid]

Thanks, but maybe you should slap me upside the head instead. Knock some sense into me.

[Hotzn]

If it weren't for those intrepid 1,000-hours-players, the world would know a lot less about TLD. We can only look so far because we are standing on the shoulders of giants.

[thinair]

200 days 4 hours and 72% world explored and then 200 days 18 hours... 95% of world explored?

[mystifeid]

Part 3

After using a Timberwolf Mountain spawn for the first playthrough above and a Desolation Point spawn for the second, this time I wanted to use Pleasant Valley. After three abortive attempts lasting between seven and thirty days I finally managed to keep going.

All of the spawn points are on the same side of the map as the Mystic River cave - a cave I am usually keen to loot - but a light source is required so I would first go to the mountaineers hut and and loot both it and the ice fishing hut as well as picking up a few cat tails before returning to the Mystic River cave. I found it was possible to do this from all of the spawn points, even the one near the Three Strikes farm. In a way, the Pleasant Valley spawn points came to feel like slightly more difficult Timberwolf Mountain spawns.

The goals this time:
- maximize time in Pleasant Valley -> check to see if more blizzards occur. Is the weather really worse?
- minimize exploration - go to as few places as possible while still ensuring a comfortable existence.
- build a nest - to see what the attraction is - and move around as little as possible.
- beat previous bests for bears (5), wolves (40), deer (43) and rabbits (43).
- don't use snares.
- don't fish.

In reverse order then.

One fuzzy headed morning I forgot I wasn't fishing and promptly caught a couple. So I blew that one. Gone. Next time.

Not snaring was more successful and like fishing, snaring now seems like a superfluous activity given the availability of a ranged weapon and the abundance of game. As things stand, in a normal game I will never make another snare.

Cruised the pb's. Although wolves started becoming very thin on the ground.

I'm not keen on basebuilding at the best of times and trying to restrict myself to it as much as possible for such a long time I found incredibly boring. It became very difficult to play more than two or three days gametime without dozing off and in one realtime day it was just as hard to complete more than ten days. By contrast, on the last playthrough above, when I was travelling I played up to fifty days per day. And it was hard to quit.

59% does not seem like a minimum of exploration so the operative words must be 'comfortable existence'. I have zero interest in pursuing this further.

Wow, 170 days in Pleasant Valley. In the end it started to feel like a prison. The wind nearly drove me insane and would usually just stop long enough to trick me into doing something before it would start up again. Often as either a blizzard or as the blizzard you have when you're not having a blizzard. Were there more blizzards? A few but nothing conclusive. Is the weather worse in Pleasant Valley? Again the only answer is a very subjective 'Yes'.

Once more, full stats below.

Coldest temp this time - a felt -99C. Just can't seem to crack the ton. Grrr.

Bear at the base of Signal Hill. This bear shrugged off a couple of piercing arrows the day before and this was the first arrow of the day which dropped it instantly. Ouch. The theory about requiring a (big) headshot for an instant kill looks like it's history.

When the first Interloper test build came out, my firemaster badge was on 36% and by the end of the test builds it was on 72%. The test build fires were stripped and I went back to 36%. Now that I am on 100%, I have lit 1000 fires just in Interloper.

 

Level 5 Carcass Harvesting - Day 87

Level 5 Cooking - Day 97

Level 5 Archery - Day 121

Level 5 Firestarting - Day 200 (The day I started 30 fires)

[exeexe]

On 29/9/2016 at 0:15 AM, mystifeid said:

Why did you go from 56xx in stalker to 25xx in average calories per day in interlopper?

[mystifeid]

56xx is my highest and is probably from a Stalker playthrough where I died pretty quickly. The 200 day Stalker run from which a lot of those stats come is sitting on 2613  (And really, I'm not sure how to use that much energy but my highest in Interloper is about the same - 5445. Must be a lot of running.)

 

[mystifeid]

Part 4 : 200 Days of the Wolf

Goal - kill as many wolves as possible.

Constraints - no feat buffs, no reading skill books, no fishing, no snaring and no hatchet

Wow, it's been a long time between drinks. It took longer to complete a 200 day game with this goal than the previous three combined. That's more than 400 hours. Embarrassing eh? That's ok. I have no shame. Unlike the last three 200 day games this one was exciting and riveting right to the end. With two days left I had killed 149 wolves and desperately wanted to make it 150 but they were an endangered species for miles around. Sitting in the mountaineer's hut I tossed up between Deer Clearing, Eric's Falls and Pleasant Valley. Many times I had revisited locations expecting to find respawned wolves only to find none so relying on the furthest corners of Timberwolf Mountain to supply another wolf seemed like a dubious prospect so I packed up and headed back to Pleasant Valley. The next day I started out on the road to the Crossroads. One of my least favorite trips and one I no longer do because it is very stressful. Usually, at the end of this day I am more drained than my character and my character is dead on it's feet. Crossed the bridge and got half way down the long hill toward the bear cave and started freezing so I warmed up beside a coal fire and drank some coffee then continued on. At the bottom of the hill I looked right and there were two wolves. Thirty seconds later they were both dead and I had killed 151 wolves.

Quite often while playing this game I thought that it seemed colder than usual and it would take some time before I remembered once more that it was colder because I wasn't using the Cold Fusion buff. It was cold everywhere it seemed except Coastal Highway. This is the first time I've spent any real time in Coastal Highway and I can see why people don't want to leave it. With six hours of daylight left the air temperature was usually around -26C while at the same time in Pleasant Valley it was often -36C and with an incessant wind blowing. It makes a big difference to what is possible. But Coastal Highway can be sooo pretty.

Nice to see that without the Efficient Machine buff my average energy expenditure has risen to nearly 3000 Calories per day.

Turns out that not reading skill books doesn't feel like it makes too much of a difference. Even though it does. This is the first game I've burned them without reading them. Here are the days when I reached the highest attained level in the applicable skills.

Carcass Harvesting Level 5 - Day 113 (Increase of 26 days)
Cooking Level 5 - Day 110 (Increase of 13 days)
Firestarting Level 4 - Day 106 (Unable to compare)

Aggressively hunting wolves pays off handsomely in the comparatively small amount of time required to reach level 5 archery skill.

Archery Level 5 - Day 71 (Reduced by 50 days from the last game!)

As far as the other constraints are concerned, I don't regard not fishing or not snaring as a handicap anymore. Fishing in particular takes a lot of time that in my opinion can be spent more productively in the pursuit of food by hunting deer, (and with level 5 cooking skill) wolves and bears. Hunting animals I think will also tend to raise the cooking skill faster. As far as rabbits are concerned, I would much rather just shoot one or two as needed rather than sit around waiting all night for them. And a hatchet chews up whetstones fast. In 200 days I think I chopped up about four limbs outside with the hacksaw. Which does take longer but for such a small amount who needs a hatchet.

So it is one thing to kill a lot of wolves but it is another thing entirely to find them. I tried my best to constantly move and not spend longer than three or four days in one place. This was my route.

TWM -> PV -> ML -> CH -> DP -> CH -> ML -> CH -> PV -> ML -> CH -> PV -> TWM -> PV -> CH -> DP -> CH -> PV -> ML -> CH -> PV -> TWM -> PV

Annoyingly short of 500km but still 60km further than my best.

This is the second time I've had a bedroll ruined in Interloper and the impact on the game is quite severe. It was upon exiting Desolation Point and reaching Crumbling Highway on day 28 that it happened this time. This beats cabin fever hands down. There was no option, no choice but to leave in whatever weather was happening at the time.

Soon after reaching Coastal Highway I killed my first bear and leaving the skin to cure decided to return to Mystery Lake to search everywhere I had missed the first time for another bedroll. The trip was unsuccessful and I returned to Coastal Townsite only to discover that I'd left all my arrowheads and feathers at the Camp Office in Mystery Lake. With five arrows I headed back via all the Eastern caves in Pleasant Valley, again hoping to find a bedroll and again was unsuccessful. More than that, this trip was the hardest and most stressful I can remember playing. Never again.

Finally I arrived back in Coastal Highway, killed a second bear and after about ten days for curing I was able to craft my 3kg bearskin bedroll. The best thing about bearskin bedrolls is that, if they are in good condition, sleeping in caves becomes almost as safe as sleeping in a house. The worst thing is that to keep them in good condition a constant supply of new bear skins is required. Although I killed twelve bears in this game, I think only five or six went into the bedroll. One or two bears I never found and as for the last two, I didn't even bother looking.

The vast majority of the wolves, even after reaching level 5 archery skill, were killed by simply allowing them to charge me and putting an arrow into their head at the last second. I don't know why, but there is something electrifying about this and it never gets dull. Finding and finishing off a wolf pack in around a minute is truly sublime.

Certainly, this method is very fast and warmth lost compared to stalking is practically nil. Around twenty percent of the time I miss the head and a struggle ensues although because the wolf has an arrow in it, the struggle is usually brief. Maybe five times in this game I missed altogether and the struggle was more serious. Any struggle though can result in torn clothing which is very undesirable when constantly moving and without the usual stockpile of skins.

Sometimes I do stalk a wolf, particularly if we are on uneven ground or even just sometimes for the hell of it. The most annoying wolves run away from the wolfskin coat and there is something strange about trying to run down a wolf instead of the other way around.

I have two main gripes with the game the way it is now. Ten hour blizzards (mainly in Pleasant Valley) and slow progress bars. Both of these add no challenge and frankly are just boring. It is in the middle of a blizzard that I will alt-tab to this forum just to escape that damned wind noise instead of letting it drive me to drink again.

However I am very afraid that these little things will not stop me from trying to kill more wolves in a new game.

Once more, here are the stats.

[djanico]

How to make Interloper more interesting at late game:

1> Food scarcity, Even fishing holes over time should produce less fish (on a reset timer of X days)

2> Late game WOLF PACKS, after XX days, Now you will see random wolf packs of 3 wolfs all walking and hunting together. Multiple wolves can attack you, so you must learn to avoid these packs. (still provide loner wolves spawns as necessary)

3> Bear has a chance start hunting you. Ala Hunted challenge... after XX days a bear will start to track you, even to your home location. Have him roar and knock at your doorstep...

4> Damaged shelter: After so many blizzards, make the houses/shelters take damage. Damage taken will reduce the heat capacity of the houses as they degrade. This will require you to repair your shelter, or find a new one. Add a new menu item in the Gui that shows shelter condition (% dmg), and indoor temperature.  Add "nails" as in ingame item that can be forged or workshopped. as well as an item that can be looted ingame. Nails and Fir wood are needed to repair your home.  Bears that hunt you down and start banging your home and also cause shelter damage. Shelters can reach a point of ruined and unusable.

5> Food Degradation: just a personal note.. i never understood how leaving food outside in the open air preserves food better than keeping it indoor. Leaving food outside SHOULD ATTRACT WOLVES AND BEARS! Add Salt in the game, you can find salt as a looted item in houses, or even add them as an item you can acquire in mines. The Hibernia whaling station should also carry abundant salt. Salt will allow you to safely preserve food indoors, at a cost of increased thirst when eating salty food.

6> Random Events: Rare Wolves Den with an Alpha wolf), Momma bear with cubs that will attack anything near them, a Rare white Polar Bear! Killing it you can harvest his head as a hatpiece (to workshop) and his claws as a weapon to fabricate! Your in your shelter during a blizzard and a large branch slams into your house taking severe damage! Also good events, Fishing abundance! (Change to find a good fishing spot! Herd of dears roaming the land to hunt down! ...

[Vinceofpyrenees]

On ‎11‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 7:33 PM, djanico said:

How to make Interloper more interesting at late game:

1> Food scarcity, Even fishing holes over time should produce less fish (on a reset timer of X days)

2> Late game WOLF PACKS, after XX days, Now you will see random wolf packs of 3 wolfs all walking and hunting together. Multiple wolves can attack you, so you must learn to avoid these packs. (still provide loner wolves spawns as necessary)

3> Bear has a chance start hunting you. Ala Hunted challenge... after XX days a bear will start to track you, even to your home location. Have him roar and knock at your doorstep...

4> Damaged shelter: After so many blizzards, make the houses/shelters take damage. Damage taken will reduce the heat capacity of the houses as they degrade. This will require you to repair your shelter, or find a new one. Add a new menu item in the Gui that shows shelter condition (% dmg), and indoor temperature.  Add "nails" as in ingame item that can be forged or workshopped. as well as an item that can be looted ingame. Nails and Fir wood are needed to repair your home.  Bears that hunt you down and start banging your home and also cause shelter damage. Shelters can reach a point of ruined and unusable.

5> Food Degradation: just a personal note.. i never understood how leaving food outside in the open air preserves food better than keeping it indoor. Leaving food outside SHOULD ATTRACT WOLVES AND BEARS! Add Salt in the game, you can find salt as a looted item in houses, or even add them as an item you can acquire in mines. The Hibernia whaling station should also carry abundant salt. Salt will allow you to safely preserve food indoors, at a cost of increased thirst when eating salty food.

6> Random Events: Rare Wolves Den with an Alpha wolf), Momma bear with cubs that will attack anything near them, a Rare white Polar Bear! Killing it you can harvest his head as a hatpiece (to workshop) and his claws as a weapon to fabricate! Your in your shelter during a blizzard and a large branch slams into your house taking severe damage! Also good events, Fishing abundance! (Change to find a good fishing spot! Herd of dears roaming the land to hunt down! ...

Interesting.

 

Of course your level guys are at one million kilometers of mine.

I eat 2500-3500 calories at day in interloper and I'm starving. I cannot understand how you find all that food. (my best game 13 days).