Interlope me, bro!

[Best_Leopard]

Hi, everyone!  It's been quite a long time since I was here, but I recently came back to TLD after some time away and wanted to share my experience of coming back and trying Interloper for the first time.

First, some background on my previous experience:  I would describe myself as an “Intermediate” TLD player.  While I don’t have the high level of mastery and expertise that some players do on this forum, I’ve got a good grasp of the game and what I think is a solid competency with the skills and mechanics of TLD.  Steam tells me that between my partner and I, we’ve logged 250+ hours in the game, much of that time co-piloting for each other.  I’ve explored all the current maps (on my own -- never used any internet maps or resources), know my way between most locations, gotten most of the achievements, and have a respectable (though by no means impressive, I know) Stalker run of 44 days (no hibernation) still in progress that I was playing at the beginning of this year.

Coming back to the game last week, I noticed Interloper and was in the mood for a challenge, so I decided to give it a whirl.  From what I remember, the beginning of my first try went something like this: 

Wait, I didn’t get to choose my location?  Oh, I guess the game will surprise me, huh?

All right, I recognize this place. I’m in Pleasant Valley, I think.  Just need to get to the farmhouse.  Getting cold very fast on the way… no time to check, but my clothes must be terrible.  Better light a fire quick to get warm.  Wait, what?!  No matches?!  Oh, wow.  Interloper is mean.  Better run, then.

Got to shelter in the farmhouse.  Searching everywhere, but holy crap there’s basically nothing here.  Worse than stalker, but I should have expected this.  No matches anywhere, even in the basement.  Basically no food.  Realization hits:  I can’t stay.  I need to GTFO and keep moving.

Run to the barn.  More freezing damage on the way.  Get inside – feeling of relief – and start to search the place.  But hold on – I’m still freezing inside the the building.  Check my temperature and see it’s still in the negative.  I get in the truck, but it must be crazy cold outside and my clothes must be terrible, because it’s barely warm enough. 

Rest and quickly search the barn.  Yay, matches!  Ok, a bit of daylight left.  I can get to the crossroads with this, and I better get moving because the weather is holding for now and this is PV, so that could change at any moment.  Besides, I think it might get too cold at night for me to survive in the barn.

 On the way, start to freeze again.  Reasoning that I can’t afford to lose more condition, I stop and decide to build a fire on the side of the road.  Only to realize that I have no tinder.  Damn!  Quickly strip a stick while freezing to death.  Manage to get a fire after three failed attempts (What a waste of matches!) only to build it up with the pittance of wood I have in my backpack and realize that the temperature is so cold and my clothes are so crappy that I’m STILL freezing to death next to the fire.  Maybe if I use my old trick of deploying the bedroll, I can—Oh, no.  No no no.  There’s NO BEDROLL.  I now come to the conclusion that Interloper isn’t just mean, it’s sadistic.

Abandon my useless fire and start running again.  Realize that I was so close to the crossroads that I could have just pushed on and gotten to shelter with a loss of only a few more condition points (*facepalm*).  Newbie mistake.  Apparently taking a few months off has made me rusty at this game.

Take a bit of time to raid the store and the house at the crossroads.  Start repairing my clothes only to be stopped by nightfall.  Ohhhh… can’t sew in the dark.  I guess they fixed that.  Well, I guess there’s no choice but to sleep.  I eat some stuff from my small amount of food and go to sleep.

Wake up and note the condition gain:  not nearly as much as I expected.  A quick look in my backpack tells me that my food store will not keep me alive for more than another day.  I don’t like to use starvation tactics unless there’s no other choice, but that seems to be the situation now.  My character (we call him Calamity Jim) tells me that his stomach feels like an empty pit.  I feel a bit bad not letting him eat the food in his backpack, but I reassure him that as soon as we get ahead a bit, I’ll let him eat and take a nap.

Seems obvious now that my only option is go to Coastal Highway ASAP.  There will hopefully be more food there, and then I can make my way to DP.  I realize that there’s almost certainly no knife, no hatchet, no gun in the game world to find, so I’ll need to forge tools. 

I repair the rest of my clothes during the cold part of the morning and then set out.  Still WAY too cold.  The “feels like” temperature is -32.  I almost chicken out and stay put, but then I remind myself that I’ll starve if I don’t keep moving.  Run, then, Jimmy boy.  Run!

Make it to the mine with a condition of about 45%.  Between freezing and starving, I’m getting weaker hour by hour and can’t seem to recover enough.  With no lantern, I’m forced to spare another precious match at the entrance of the mine to make a fire.  I warm up, still desperately wishing for that absent bedroll, and grab a brand to run through the mine, grabbing as much coal as I can.

All along the way, I hunt for stuff, but pickings are slim.  By the time I arrive in CH, I’ve got a hacksaw and a hammer, thank goodness, but still barely any food.  I run from the mine to the trailer below, but a storm blows up and forces me to stay.  I break some stuff, eat, sleep.  Regain only enough condition to keep me holding steady.  Out of food.

By the time the storm breaks, it’s night.  With less than 50% condition and no knife, I don’t dare brave the wolves of CH, so I stay.  Resting, drinking water, resting, sleeping an hour or two.  When dawn breaks, it’s cruelly cold outside and the wind is howling, but I’ve already wasted too much time.  I haul down to the road and onto the lake shore.  It’s clear enough that I can see Jackrabbit Island ahead of me.  Less wolves than the townsite, and there might be food up there, so I go for it.

More freezing, more starving.  Condition keeps dropping by slow degrees.  I search the whole house, but there’s nothing to eat.  In fact, there’s basically nothing here at all.  I stay long enough to warm up.  Instinct says: you’re warm and safe here, so stay and rest.  But no, I know that I can’t.  No food means a slow but inevitable death.

Should I risk the townsite?  The gas station probably has at least a little food, but I’m certain it’s crawling with wolves, and I can’t afford a struggle.  Worth the risk, I decide, and get going.  I make it there and, as luck would have it, the house near the shore with the fireplace isn’t burned down.  Better yet, there’s a deer carcass (!) nearby.  I need to harvest it, but I’m already taking freezing damage again so I take shelter in the house.

By the time I’m warm enough to go out, it’s dark.  I know already by now that it’ll be so cold that even a fire won’t keep me from freezing unless it’s a big one, but maybe I can at least get the meat.  I run out and use the hacksaw to grab the meat.  I was able to do that fast enough not to die, so I go back to the house and warm up.  Rather than risk a blizzard to get the hide and guts, I start a fire in the fireplace and cook the meat.  That, plus a little herbal tea I found, and some sleep brings me another day.

Ok, my condition is a little improved.  Almost up to 60% again.  I’m brave enough to sneak by the four goddamn patrolling wolves around the gas station and grab a few more supplies, plus dart into the house that’s a little way behind it.  Temping to stay at the gas station, but again I feel pushed on by scarcity.  I have it in my head that until I have tools, there’s no hope, so I hang everything on the promise of getting to the forge at DP.

I slip past the wolves again, but it takes a long time.  I’m obliged to sneak too much and I’m getting cold.  Even when I manage to sprint to the car, I’m not warm enough to keep from freezing.  I manage to get back to the house by the coast.  I want to search the rest of the houses at the townsite,  but by now I know that clothes and food will be mainly absent.  Is it worth the investment of time?  Anything I truly need (firestriker, magnifying glass, lantern, bedroll) isn’t likely to be in the coastal houses.  In fact, I’m not really sure at this point that any of these items even exist in this difficulty level. 

I decide to press on.  I manage to get to Misanthrope’s homestead and raid that, then bad weather blows in again and I’m forced to stay the rest of the day and the night.  I have a little more packaged food from my raiding around, so I eat and have some more tea.  By the time I’m up and ready in the morning, my condition is almost back to 70%.  I have a little food and am feeling optimistic.  Time to set out.

Very cold, but by now I know there’s no helping it.  I don’t want to wait around until later in the day even though it might be warmer.  The weather could get bad again and I can’t risk getting stuck.  Onward!  I run across the ice toward the DP end of the highway, freezing cold and at risk of hypothermia, but I make it to shore.  I spot some rosehips nearby and stealth-crouch while pausing to gather them (it will only take a few seconds!) .

And then…

Then.

A wolf appears.  Right in front of me, up over the snowbank, much too close.  Even though I’m crouched, it sees me and pounces.  I struggle frantically, but poor Jim has only the heavy hammer.  By the time I shake the wolf off, I’m torn and bleeding.  Quickly, I slap on a bandage and sprint the short distance to the houses there – only to realize that they’re ALL burned down.  Every one of them.  It never occurred to me that the house there wouldn’t be standing.

What now? What now?!  I start to panic.  My condition has been shredded below 30% again and it’s dropping fast from the cold.  I don’t know where I can go from here for shelter (my memory of the CH map fails me now when I most need it), so I desperately run onward to Crumbling Highway.

Condition pathetically low, I make it to the basement there and search it, but then I’m stuck.  No bedroll means no sleep, which means no healing.  I eat the very last of my food to stave off death and pass some time to warm up, but I know that if I’m stuck here for the night, I will most certainly die.

Out I go.

I can’t afford to freeze, so I run.  I haven’t been through here much, don’t know the way very clearly, but if I can just get to the mine on the other side of the stream—

WOOF WOOF WOOF!

Well, shit.  I have no flares, no torches, no stim.  Stamina is low.  I keep running, desperately hoping to get away, but the wolf charges in.  CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK---!

And that’s it.  It’s over.

I sat there for a few minutes, cursing my terrible luck and questioning my every decision.  Interloper is NASTY, I decided.  Cruel.  I mean, no bedroll?  How do you survive without a bedroll?  What evil, despicable game designer decided that?!  I can live with no starting matches, but the bedroll is so essential... and the weather is so cold, and food so scarce that death seems inevitable. Terrible.  It’s just sadistic and terrible, that’s what it is.

…

Five minutes later, I’m clicking into a new game.  What can I say?  It hurts so good!

 

Since then, I’ve started at least 10 new Interloper sandboxes, most of which lasted only a few days due to poor weather or stupid decisions.  I had one longer run of 15 days in which I actually got to DP and made my tools, only to be hit by Cabin Fever (which I’ve never had to deal with before) and found myself unable to sleep or rest at Hibernia.  I waited out the timer for the 24 hours, but because I hadn’t managed to be outside, I immediately got Cabin Fever again.  Forced outside, I was mauled by a wolf and died.

My current run has just exceeded that in days.  I’ve been through PV and ML, have a bedroll, lantern, firestriker, and the makings of some warm clothes curing.  I have enough food for a few days thanks to rabbit snares,my condition is fairly good, and I have laid my plans carefully.  I thoroughly expect to die at any second.

Thanks, everyone!

[togg]

Beautiful run, as always in interloper.

Recap of the mistakes besides the obvious ones (it's cold, don't waste matches etc):

 

1) There're

Spoiler

matches on the farmstead basement, it's a fixed spawn.

 

2) You clearly didn't get enough sticks on the road! Always take sticks.

3) Leaving CH while injured, I've died in so many similar circumstances... those burned houses are orrible to ses when you're low on health.

 

 

Next time that you got the hammer go directly on DP I'm now on my first run where I think I will manage! I'll write about it tomorrow.

[mystifeid]

Well written. +1

[cekivi]

You did better than when I was testing Interloper during the early release.

Oh, a wolf! Let's see if they made them more dangerous. Fight - struggle - down to 5% condition, no bandages. I bled out trying to harvest my socks

[Best_Leopard]

Awesome!  Thanks for the comments, everyone.

 

On 11/23/2016 at 3:51 PM, togg said:

Beautiful run, as always in interloper.

Recap of the mistakes besides the obvious ones (it's cold, don't waste matches etc):

1) There're

Hidden Content

2) You clearly didn't get enough sticks on the road! Always take sticks.

3) Leaving CH while injured, I've died in so many similar circumstances... those burned houses are orrible to ses when you're low on health.

Next time that you got the hammer go directly on DP I'm now on my first run where I think I will manage! I'll write about it tomorrow.

Thanks for the advice, togg.   You're right on with everything you've said, and I should have known better.  I guess taking some months away from the game made me rustier than I thought.  I probably missed the matches due to low light conditions in the basement and no light source, but I know where they are now, so I grab them every time.  Sticks in quantity is a must -- no argument there!  I should have noticed the severe temperature and planned accordingly, but deep-buried habits from playing long-ago Voyageur games (with full gear) tricked me into thinking a modest fire would be enough.  And yes, curse those burned houses!  *shakes fist*

I'm proud to say that my current loper run is now at 53 days.  I have the crafted tools, a bunch of arrowheads, a stack of 12 birch saplings...

...and no maple sapling to be found.  Argh!

I now deeply regret not hitting the spots in ML that I'm most familiar with in search of one, as I don't remember their spawn locations in CH (where I've settled for now) and food resources are scarce, so travel seems risky.  I'm exploring now in a desperate search for that damn maple sapling.  Wish me luck!

[Hotzn]

On 18.11.2016 at 7:57 PM, Best_Leopard said:

Realization hits: I can’t stay. I need to GTFO and keep moving.

Excellent read, I enjoyed it very much. The quote above made me laugh out loud - yes, that first deep realization you're in some kind of trouble when playing Interloper for the first time.

[Best_Leopard]

@Hotzn   Completely!  It's actually a great feeling to me, since one of my favorite things about TLD is experiencing that risk and vulnerability.  I love the challenge of Interloper so much!  I doubt I can go back to playing any other difficulty level now.  Thanks for your kind comment -- I enjoyed reading others' first Interloper stories and it inspired me to share my own.  <3