Vince 49

Do you have firewood?

@wilsonaka, Thanks. I missed that. I'll go over the post again. @Stinky socks, all the things you mentioned help, but don't prevent surprise attacks. Less than an hour ago, while playing a Stalker game, I was walking through a usually wolf free area and a wolf came over a rise and attacked me without warning. Things like not letting your condition get too low, wearing cloths with high protection*, and having your defensive weapon of choice as sharp as possible can make the difference between an inconvenient struggle and having to start a new game. * My favorites items that combine good protection with reasonable warmth/wind bonuses are the Moose-Hide Cloak and the Gauntlets.

Hi @wilsonaka, I did learn a lot from your posts with I originally saw them. However, I can't find anywhere where different protection levels were compared to wolf struggle damage. If I missed it, please do let me know.

I've read several posts providing information on the mechanics of wolf struggles. From them I've seen that the heavy hammer will usually get the wolf off you the quickest, but it only scares the wolf who may come back to attack you again. Also, that the hatched is usually a bit better than the knife as a bleed out weapon. Relative to injury to the player, all the posts state that the player's condition is the most important factor. However, none of the posts I've seen address the effect of protection on the amount of player damage. With the Moose-Hide Cloak and the Gauntlets, it's possible to have a protection of 50% or more. I would think that this would have a significant effect on the outcome of a wolf struggle. Does anyone have any hard information on the effect of clothing protection on the outcome of wolf struggles?

I recently made a post where, near the beginning of the game, I used an arrow to get my bearings. As I read it over a few minutes later, I thought to myself, how would I have an arrow at the beginning of a game? I realized that I had accidentally combined parts of two games, so deleted the post. Below is the post as it should have been. If you have an arrow with you, you don't need to loose your bearings. You may not know exactly where you are, but you certainly can know in which direction you are heading. I recently started a game in PV that began a couple of hours before dawn. Within a few minutes I was in a full blown blizzard. I though I knew where I was and luckily made it to the barn, already at risk of hypothermia. Finding no new clothes, I was still below 0, so needed to make it to the farmhouse if I was to survive. I left the barn and took the time to get an arrow from the archery target. Without the arrow, I would have wandered around until I was dead. As it was, I started walking in what I thought was due south were I should eventually encounter the river just north of the farm house. Every little while I would walk backwards a bit so I could see my footprints, then drop an arrow. Since a dropped arrow always points north, I knew how to adjust my direction to keep heading south. I did finally make it to the river and from there to the farmhouse--alive.

Two Things: First, if you have been playing TLD for quite a while, you may be surprised when you are attacked by a moose while you are next to a fire. In the more recent versions of TLD, I believe starting with Fearless Navigator, moose are no longer scared of a fire. Second, if you don't have a cooking pot, you can still cook a full 1 kg of meat. Just drop it on the floor or ground near the stove or fire, then pickup the slab of meat with right-click and drag it onto one of the cooking hot spots.

An unusual thing happened recently after I posted an issue about lost key bindings in the Technical Discussions sub-forum: I got bumps to my reputation corresponding to about a 15% boost to what I had accumulated over the post couple of years. Although that's a good thing, I wondered why. I occurred to me that it might have been the specific keys, so I thought I should share them here. As you know, the default key for Sprint is [Left-Shift]. I found that awkward. Sometimes, like the beginning of an interloper game where you haven't been to a forge yet, sprinting is really, really important. I liked the idea of using the [R] key. It's easily accessible while you are pressing the [W] key to walk and 'R' stands for run. Since the default binding of the [R] key is for Reload, why not use the [L] key for that (as in Load). So, I changed the key for reloading my weapon to [L], then changed the key for Sprinting/Running to [R]. While traveling in a tight situation, I have my middle finger pressing the [W] key, with the finger to the left resting above the [2] key (to ready my weapon if needed), and my finger to the right on the [R] key (to run away, if that's the best option). This is my 'Fight or Flight' travel mode. Try it, you might like it.

UPDATE: Yesterday and today, up to a few hours ago, the key binding would consistently revert to the default whether I quit the current game and returned with Resume or quite TLD entirely, restarted it, and Resumed. This happened about a dozen times all together. However, now the game remembers the new bindings! I was trying an experiment to examine how wolves reacted to the player if the player had aimed (evoking the wolf's charge) while standing next to a fire. During that experiment, I quit and reloaded more than a dozen times and the key bindings did not revert. I thought that STEAM might have applied a hot fix, however the game version remains 1.92 70699 S. I have no explanation for this.

I encountered an issue with the latest build as of December 19, 2020, build 1.92 70699 S on STEAM. It does not remember custom key bindings. In this particular case, I set Sprint to the [R] key, and Reload to the [L] key. It works fine for the current session, but after returning to the game with Resume, the bindings are reset to the defaults. Although I don't think it's unique to me, if necessary I would be happy to provide a saved game and other details.

I just tried this again. 'Not especially fast (27 days 5 hrs) but intense and fun. I took screen shots, but won't use up the bandwidth to post them unless someone wants to see them. This time I took my time (sort of) and examined where the hard parts were. I see three. First, it's easy to have almost everything, but find you are missing one item, such as a magnifying glass. Second, it is challenging to get three skills up to level 3 in about three weeks, while still working on all the other aspects of the challenge. Third (and I didn't see this previously) it would be extremely difficult to get the protection up to 36 or more, without having to craft a moose or bear coat. I still would recommend this challenge to anyone who wants to try a flash game. I should note that I made a post, buried in this topic, where I reduced the required warmth+wind bonus from 38 to 36 and the protection from 36 to 34. Good luck--you'll need it. For reference, my best is 19 days, but Bean did it just over 15 days!

Something occurred to me recently. Earlier in this topic, I suggested that having an option to disable strains would be great. However, if the developers don't want to do that, maybe they would be willing to provide an option to turn off all alerts and warnings about strains. Getting a strain every once in a while, although startling and not too realistic, isn't all that bad. The part that drives me nuts is the constant warnings and the red feather of tripping. I could do without those.

@Serenity, 'Got it, thanks.

I know this sound simple. I mostly play an earlier version of TLD, before the sprain warning system. In that version, pain pills fix it. I've seen comments relating to the newer versions that pain pills are virtually useless now. So, for the latest version, how do you treat a sprain?

@jeffpeng, I agree. Besides the recent changes in wolf behavior discussed here, the new "improved" sprain system was introduced in 1.56 Steadfast Ranger (the first update after Vigilant Flame). As I, and many others with significant experience in the wild have posted elsewhere, the new sprain system is not realistic. Worse, the constant warnings and alerts add unneeded stress and discourage exploration. It is unfortunate that the "bad" changes decrease the value of great changes like the complete rework of Pleasant Valley plus many subtle improvements, such as slight increases in light level in many interiors. In Vigilant Fame, even in the middle of the day, you really need a torch or lantern to navigate inside the PV barn, while the later versions increase the lighting just enough to enable navigation without a light source. This is probably my second to last post. I haven't kept track of the number of hours I've played TLD, but the sum of the in-game days of my current saves is 1369 days. I truly believe the Vigilant Flame version of TLD is one of the best PC games ever made. I've really enjoyed the play and this forum. I've been a part of several topics here where there was wide disagreement, but everyone was polite and respectful of other's opinions. I wish that was true everywhere. I will make a last post about my "Warm Interloper" soon. It is the closest I have found to a viable level intermediate between Stalker and Interloper. As a famous frog once said "It isn't easy being green--but being orange is far, far worse".

@darkscaryforest, no I do not. I was concentrating on surviving. Like you, I've never seen anything like this in all my time playing TLD, which is part of the reason I made this post. @haft2doit, based on what you say, you should definitely try Warm Interloper. If you do, it would be great if you post your experience with it. Good luck.