Is the Long Dark a "self sustaining" survival game?


yoli

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Beach combing added a lot of resources to the coastal areas and there are ways to light fires without matches with more announced. Likely it's like @selfless said: you'll get bored long before you run out of supplies.

For instance, there's a long running thread by a player who has survived 800+ days.

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Theoretically you can live forever with the Magnifying Glass for firestarting. Even if you have used all Scrap Metal to forge/repair the Hatched and/or Hacksaw and have trashed all furniture in the game for reclaimed wood (which you can do without a tool) you can still pick up Sticks for firesource which are unlimited and plenty available, especially after a Blizzard.

And you can even sort of try it out without having to survive for thousands of days first, just start an Interloper game, head to ML to grab the Magny Glass and try living solely of deer which you have stolen from a wolf (the only safe food source once you have depleted everything else), naked without crafting any tools. It's possible but very tough to do for a long time.

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Technically finite but practically infinite.  

The game does have some resources that do not regenerate, and you are forced to move around a bit, but there are enough resources to keep you alive for as long as a sane person would care to play the game.  Also you can't build anything really permanent in the game, so day 3,000 of game 1 is not going to be much different in terms of challenge and gameplay than day 30 of game 2.

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2 hours ago, greggbert said:

Technically finite but practically infinite.  

The game does have some resources that do not regenerate, and you are forced to move around a bit, but there are enough resources to keep you alive for as long as a sane person would care to play the game.  Also you can't build anything really permanent in the game, so day 3,000 of game 1 is not going to be much different in terms of challenge and gameplay than day 30 of game 2.

Welcome to the forums ;)

Do you mean it the other way around, technically infinite but practically finite? Because as I've written above, with Sticks you can make a fire forever and wildlife replenishes. Which resources were you thinking of that do not regenerate?

Also, at least in interloper and probably stalker day 30 is certainly a whole different story than day 3000 ;)

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There was a Reddit Poster who had a +2000 day run that only ended because of a mistake he made.  Granted it was on Voyager but it was in 2269 days in fact.

I have a 750+ day run going and I'm not even vaguely hurting for supplies ...

As others have said in this thread and elsewhere on these forums, you could baring any mistakes on your own, live forever.

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On 11/2/2016 at 3:05 PM, yoli said:

Ok thanks, well 800 days is fair enough I guess :) If he made that much this can only be with respawning resources so I would say the game is "self sustaining"!

To be clear, when a place is looted, it stays looted. Items will never re-spawn. If you clear out the Camp Office, for example, it is then always empty unless you store items there yourself. The only re-spawning resources would be sticks and wildlife.

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On ‎2016‎-‎11‎-‎05 at 9:15 AM, GroggyNoggin said:

To be clear, when a place is looted, it stays looted. Items will never re-spawn. If you clear out the Camp Office, for example, it is then always empty unless you store items there yourself. The only re-spawning resources would be sticks and wildlife.

That is correct. Wildlife, sticks, and whatever washes ashore when beach combing are the only perpetually respawning items in the long dark.

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On 11/5/2016 at 2:15 PM, GroggyNoggin said:

To be clear, when a place is looted, it stays looted. Items will never re-spawn. If you clear out the Camp Office, for example, it is then always empty unless you store items there yourself. The only re-spawning resources would be sticks and wildlife.

I've seen items respawn during major updates: books, saplings and medicinal plants. It has already happened twice in my 900+ day sandbox. But this was a glitch resulting from the updates rather than intended behavior, and I didn't use these respawned items.

Other than that, on Voyageur you are practically immortal once you get established in the wilderness. I did some calculations around this idea some time ago and although I haven't updated them lately to reflect the development of the game, I'm pretty sure you can still go for 10,000 days unless you make a basic mistake.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/12/2016 at 10:15 PM, HighwayBill said:

In addition to sticks, branches and limbs also respawn. I am also fairly sure that birch bark respawns as well - I keep finding it in the same spot near Trapper's.

Yes, sorry, not only sticks but also limbs, branches and birch bark. I meant that but didn't say it. Thanks for the clarification.

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