LucidFugue

I'm eyeing off that drill press next to the workbench and wondering.. Aurora-only crafting options? ⛄ Interested to see the new challenge. I haven't been around to see Deadman grow as a community thing, but I'll be interested to try it. Love live Fluffy (until I need to loot the dam) 🐺

I also only found one, in one of the bunkers. Multiple hatchets and knives though.

Interesting thoughts on reversing EP 2 & 3. I tend to see the blizzard as the climactic challenge of EP 3, not the timberwolves. They are definitely a central element, but both bringing survivors to the community centre and making sure it is well stocked sets up the incoming blizzard that the player is then forced to contend with through the final objectives. The blizzard is also a reason to retain the player indicator on the map. PV blizzards have always been deadly. As soon as you lose visibility, it is easy to become disoriented. The rivers and roads are almost always the longest route between destinations, but the direct paths are nearly featureless. I can't imagine expecting a player without intimate knowledge of PV to navigate to the radio tower and the coal mine (both locations the story does not direct the player to beforehand, one of which has no road to it) in a blizzard without the benefit of the map indicator. I'm not up on my Greek mythology, but there are some interesting thoughts here. Off to do some reading and pondering!

I've seen a few people musing that there seems to be a lot more "story" than what could fit into 2 more episodes. Another way to think about it is to say that all the worldbuilding that has gone into The Long Dark has value well beyond the 5 episodes that the original kickstarter proposed. The idea of Great Bear, the Collapse, the Aurora. All the work that has been done to breathe life into the world. It presents a wealth of opportunity for stories that fans of the game could connect with. While a lot of work has been done on the technical front to bring in more mechanics and improve interactions and animations and so forth, there's also been a big investment in setting the scene, so to speak. I don't know what mysteries will be left unanswered at the end of this season, but I am not at all surprised that there would be an intention to tell more stories in this world, in more formats than games alone.

Also if you go back to Molly's house, there is a jerry can on the porch. Had close to 3 litres for me (hardest difficulty).

I think the way you've worded this question really speaks to a value judgement on the survivor rescue mechanic. You have to repeat the task because you always repeat the task in games. There is never just one lock to pick, or only one enemy to shoot, or only one conversation with a lone NPC. Normally, if you don't like the lock picking minigame, you don't have to engage with it. The survivor rescue is central to this episode and cannot be skipped. It's interesting that you don't seem to find it meaningful, good, or enjoyable. There is an explanation. A passenger liner crashed. Survivors have been making their way to the town for days. Astrid is a doctor and her motivations and outlook are that of compassion for those in need. Father Tom stresses that she can provide help. Even beyond medical care, people need closure. Molly stands in stark contrast to this and makes the same point you do here - why do this when you get no recognition, no reward? Would these people go out of their way for you? This is especially interesting coming from Molly, who went out of her way to rescue Astrid at the start of the episode. At any rate, Astrid answers that she doesn't do it for recognition. This is part of her character development. The survivors are given names. Maybe that's not enough for you. Maybe you need something more for them to feel like real people. Maybe lugging bodies in the snow feels like assembly line work once you are doing it for the second or third time. My line of work is process management - which literally has its origins in developing assembly lines. To be any good at process management you *need* to be able to see the bigger picture and connect even the smallest step to it. That's how you work out what steps are valuable and what steps aren't. It's not true that the worker always knows the bigger picture. Quite often people don't understand how their efforts contribute to a larger goal, and that can leave them feeling unfulfilled. I found rescuing survivors to be meaningful.

Finished up the episode last night. Super impressed! I loved the survivor rescue mechanics both from a story and gameplay side. A really unique challenge, different than anything we've seen before. It worked superbly to reinforce Astrid's motivations and character as a doctor. Contrasting Astrid's outlook on the situation with Molly was also great. It's a really interesting choice to imbue Molly with that spirit of somebody who sees the collapse as a breaking of the shackles of society. I feel like this is a perspective that's normally attributed to disaffected men who feel like modern society removes them of agency - of masculinity. Centering Molly's position on one of regaining a sense of lost agency in this new world while remaining critical of her choices was nuanced. Particularly as she appears to be taking out a lot of her anger on the convicts, who are led themselves by someone who sees the Collapse as the start of a new world ruled through strength. I thought of Misanthropes hut in Coastal Highway, and I wonder who might be in there and what perspective they will have about the Collapse. Looking forward to it. The wolf packs are also finally here! This wasn't a feature I had been anticipating, but I enjoyed the way it was implemented in the story experience. I've played so much survival sandbox and I have been accustomed to evading combat with wolves in almost all circumstances. That meant I barely used the rifle in Episodes 1 and 2 because food was abundant and I didn't need to hunt outside of side objectives. Old habits die hard. Suddenly realising I really needed to have a weapon on me on every outing was an adjustment. The plentiful ammo made me feel more comfortable letting loose. It was a nice way to spice up the journeys between objectives and I enjoyed the episode more because of it. Overall, I'm impressed with the quality level achieved across the episode. The pacing feels great, and the time and care taken with the NPCs is so far beyond what we saw in the initial release of Episodes 1 and 2. I can see how going back to redo those was necessary to bring them up to the standard that the team have hit on this one. Congratulations!

I remember the game being very harsh initially. I've always sort of assumed that voyageur is still hard for new players because not knowing the maps is a major disadvantage, let alone all the other game knowledge you get from playing. But yeah, because the Sandbox was just for testing mechanics, indefinite survival wasn't a thing. As I recall you pretty much wanted to hit all the possible rifle spawns within the first days. I think it was Trappers, the Lookout tower, and one of the possible bunkers. Maybe also camp office? If you wanted to survive more than a week or two you'd need to learn to chase deer into wolves and use a single bullet to get the most meat. You'd time that with making a huge fire because matches were also a limited resource. The magnifying glass wasn't a guaranteed spawn so every fire counted. Once you were out of ammo and flares the only way to continue getting meat was to chase a deer into a wolf, then win the wolf struggle. That usually resulted in injuries that needed bandages, so folks were slowly sacrificing their clothing to make bandages, until finally ending it - starving and naked, fighting a wolf over a deer carcass. I never lasted that long. But it was fun to read everyone's stories.

Chiming in as I also just finished Redux Ep 2 and while the new Bear fight is a big improvement on the previous one, I found the sequence of recovering the spear through the cave to be particularly frustrating. The voice clips and text give an indication that I should be trying to stealth through. But crouched movement speed is slower than all wildlife and there is no grace period or indicator for detection. That's fine when you are the predator, but it is frustrating when you are the prey. Once detected, your only option is to run. The rear up and roar animation of the Bear is long enough that I eventually found myself better off just sprinting from cover to cover through this section. I felt misled by the 2nd cave section because the dead body is a clear point of interest as one enters the section. Icy running water is not something you want to expose yourself to under normal cicumstances. It was only in desperation after observing its patrols and looping back to the first section that I wound up risking the river cave entry. At this point the linear level design with one path for the Bear between sections and one path for the player became clear. I probably died 3-5 times through this level and it was the first time in redux where I felt frustrated by the design. The world was linear with only one route that meant success, every alternative resulted in death.

Yeah, the first person presence were things like implementing the hand holding animations for the rifle, bow, torch, matches/light sources and so forth. More complex interactions might be considered reloading the rifle, or if you're ambitious things like placing objects in the world and collecting loose items from the world.

Until the community does some documentation about what the impact of each option is, the best you have to go on are the presets for the existing experience modes to determine what none/low/medium/high/very high means. Changing settings on the fly is probably pretty destabilising. I get that it's frustrating to have to re-roll and spend a few hours seeing what the effects are, but this is what building an experience mode requires. It's probably why the team were so reluctant to release custom options until after the game was out. It's a lot of work to make sure the experience is challenging and interesting, and balance is hard to get right.

Love the idea of arty skeeo/wake transitions.

Some more thoughts now that I've mulled this over for another day. I don't think Cabin Fever works particularly well as an affliction. @selfless sums it up pretty well. You have this amorphous risk rating, and unlike most other afflictions, it isn't immediately clear how to properly impact it. But Cabin Fever thematically fits in with a lot of other ideas that have been brought up over time. They centre around the concept of psychological wellness. This was once on the old roadmap, and Raphael made several mentions of a locket as an item that would be connected to this system. I'd assume there have been attempts to incorporate a concept into the game, but Hinterland just haven't been satisfied with the results so far. Perhaps it has been shelved to focus on other things. Reading the summary of ideas for CF 3.0, what has emerged is a multi-factor cause of CF risk, and a multi-factor means of reducing it. It also seems like there's a shift away from just focusing on hibernation. Focusing on time indoors versus time outdoors is too blunt. If we're not explicitly targeting hibernation anymore, are we looking at how to simulate a higher level need? I've been a bit sour on heading in this sort of direction previously. Mostly because starting from "a sanity needs bar" and thinking of uses for it doesn't appeal to me. But the more I think about the types of maluses people are suggesting, the factors proposed to add to and remove from its impact... Is this a system whereby if you are having a richer game experience - exploring the world, gathering resources, making the most of each day - you are getting a more restful sleep and in higher spirits, reflected through condition recovery and success chance at repairs/etc. If your worldview has shrunk to just 4 walls and repetitive actions, you become restless and fidgety. If it was a little more nuanced than just hitting a trigger and contracting Cabin Fever, but instead a mechanic woven into the game, that sounds pretty neat actually. But I don't know whether the range of current player behaviour makes it possible to construct a more detailed sense of what a "making the most of each day" looks like.

My first instinct is that if a mechanic isn't adding anything, it needs to justify its existence. But I'm not assuming it isn't adding anything just because I haven't experienced it much personally. I'm also not assuming it couldn't be changed so it does add something. If we accept the objective as stated (emphasis mine): I agree with that. I raised a point about the tension between hypothermia & food poisoning forcing players indoors to rest, and cabin fever forcing players outdoors. That, to me, is part of why it isn't in a state of harmony and alignment. Others may disagree, particularly if they experience cabin fever more commonly just playing their way. But the way I see it, most afflictions are punishments for risky behaviour. Eating spoiled food, dashing across thin ice, staying out too long in freezing temperatures. Even sprains are a result of dashing with heavy loads over uneven terrain, or climbing when you're too tired. You know the risks, but you take them because there are rewards, or more pressing needs. You normally don't have the luxury of simply staying staying inside all day because of food and water. Cabin Fever comes about because there are no more pressing needs. It's safe to stay indoors, eating and sleeping. You've got it all under control, and so you're bored. Is Cabin Fever about trying to keep the game interesting when players are are risk of sitting back and feeling like they've done everything there is to do?

That's what I'm not clear on. There's a perception that Cabin Fever was introduced because of hibernation/starvation play. I'm not sure that's really accurate, but if it is I don't think it's a problem anymore. Min-maxing survival time was a thing when you could calculate survival time in the world based on the number of bandages left in the world, assuming there were no bullets or flares left. That was a thing because if you wasted your resources you might run out before day 100. Such a number doesn't exist anymore. You might run out of non-renewable resources, like bullets or flares, but there are renewable options now. The maximum theoretical survival time has extended out so far it isn't worth calculating. Players interested in testing extreme resource management do so by restricting themselves so the total amount of available resources can be an issue. Raphael has said the game design isn't intended to favour a roaming/nomadic playstyle over a "hunkering down" playstyle (or vice versa). Both are legitimate. If you want to hoard everything of use in a single cabin and live out your days there, you can. There are challenge modes based on each theme. From memory, cabin fever was changed because it was affecting hunkering down playstyles too much. As afflictions, food poisoning & hypothermia both tend to push players towards indoor environments to rest up. But in doing so they both increase your risk of triggering cabin fever. At higher difficulties, food scarcity is enough of a pull factor to get you out of the house quickly. My understanding is that cabin fever acts as a pull factor to get people out into the world and interacting. Does it serve that function well? Is it redundant?