rbos

Some neat and unexpected stuff! Looking forward to the harvesting animations.

Reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/thelongdark/comments/17sgpgj/dev_diary_november_2023/

Steam thread:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/305620/view/3820802116159638806?l=english

Hinterlands forum thread:

https://hinterlandforums.com/forums/topic/44270-november-2023-dev-diary/

Some interesting stuff here.

A relaxing morning (Day 520) cooking in the airfield. I've found the control hut to be the best spot for it: the sheltered place between the two buildings shields you from the wind from two directions, and the opened doors mean that if the wind blows straight through from either direction, at least two fires will keep going.

Personally, I don't bother to repair my (Interloper) gear until it hits about 70% condition. I feel that reaches a good balance between keeping gear in good condition and not feeling like I'm wasting cloth/hides. If I have more than (say) two bearhides or four deerhides around, I'll repair earlier. And of course rabbithides are super easy to get and renewable, so I try to keep those above 90%.

Of course, I have a lot of cloth laid up now, and beachcombing is a fairly reliable source, so maybe 70% is too low. Should I go to 80%?

Clothing issue, in my opinion: The moose cloak doesn't have much practical use in difficult game modes. It doesn't really win on any useful metric. Pretty much every Interloper player goes for double bear coats.

Bearskin Coat: 6C warmth, 5C wind, 80% water resist, 20% protection, -20% mobility, 5kg. 1.20C/kg inner slot, 2.20C/kg outer slot.
Wolfskin Coat: 4C warmth, 4C wind, 60% water resist, 12% protection, -15% mobility, 3kg. 1.33C/kg inner slot, 2.67C/kg outer slot.
Moose Cloak: 3.5C warmth, 4C wind, 90% water resist, 20% protection, -10% mobility, 4kg. 1.875C/kg outer slot only.

For the outer slot, the wolfskin coat has the best temp/kg, and the bearskin has the highest raw boost (11C). For the inner slot, the wolfskin coat has the best temp/kg, and the bearskin again has the highest raw boost.

Water resistance, wind resistance, and protection are fully irrelevant for the inner slot. Water resistance is irrelevant unless you travel during a blizzard, which is fairly easy to avoid, and the high water resistance of a bear coat makes it almost as good as a moose cloak. Protection is generally never worth optimizing for, unless you plan to get in struggles, but the bear coat matches the moose cloak.

I've never used a moose cloak, since for only one extra kilogram, you gain 3.5 degrees of extra warmth on the outer slot, one of the best bargains in the game, only losing 10% water resist and 10% mobility.

So how do we make the moose coat useful? Some ideas:

• Nerf the bear coat's water resist. Make it much more likely to get soggy.
• Buff the moose cloak's weight. If it was 3kg, the weight ratio would be 2.5, making it more weight-efficient than the bear coat, almost as warm as the wolf coat, but substantially more water-resistant and slightly better for mobility and protection. It would then be at least a sidegrade for the wolfcoat, and might make sense in some situations.
• Make the moosecoat more appealing. Give it say 3.0C warmth and 8.0 wind, so that it matches the bearcoat for the outside slot. Then, the moosecloak-bearhide combo would be the same, but 1kg lighter, and it would add additional logistical challenges for survival, forcing you to bag the odd moose in addition to the bears.

A couple observations:

• Sewing needs some kind of quality buff. The percentage condition boost you get from repairing is almost always partly wasted, and higher levels only increase the wastage.
• The amount of effort needed to get to level 5 mending merits a much better reward. In Interloper, you aren't ever going to be leaving your gear to 50% condition before repairing. I don't know what such a buff would look like. Maybe you use less cloth when you hit level 5, or maybe you can repair your gear to 120% instead of 100%.
• Sports socks are gold if you're just aiming for level 5. 0.10kg, and very fast repair time. Hoard them, haul them with you until you have level 5. You can consume a lot of cloth fast.

Couple of my favourites:

• Archimedes: https://www.youtube.com/@ArchimedesLP
• Zaknafein: https://www.youtube.com/@Zaknafein
• Grind This Game: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6STTjHxnSXp-r8NPQIutAQ (though he hasn't done TLD in quite a while, I think. I like his Oxygen Not Included streams as well).

Any other good watches? I love this game for background atmosphere.

Cooking a moose and working on "Skilled Survivor", really enjoyed this screenshot from a cave in Bleak Inlet.

Also, I've found that if you really need a very fuel-efficient cooking method, having multiple fires going lets you use one stick for like 25 minutes of runtime, since stuff still cooks during "Embers" and pauses for a while afterwards. A pile of sticks can cook a ridiculous amount of meat by doing continuous relights among a bunch of fires. It's a lot of work, but if you're short fuel, it might be worth it.

Saw this while mapping in HRV. Very pretty.

TLD-adjacent. Maybe moose and bears should fight each other!

There's that one spot in PV in the birch forest where they both spawn. That should be a bit of a bloodbath. Also, maybe free meat?

Here's a perennial favourite: what features would you like added to the Long Dark, or what features would you like to see simplified or removed entirely?

(This is a decathread because we are too small to have megathreads yet)

(This might end up being my own personal gripe thread, so buckle up)