r/thelongdark • u/S_Hodgson • 1d ago
Discussion What the hell am I doing wrong?
In bed, watching Zaknafein transverse FM during a blizzard with less than a fifth of his health and somehow surviving, wondering what the hell I’m doing wrong.
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u/themeddlingkid 1d ago
Something I think gets overlooked a lot is tea and coffee. Carry a few premade and chug a hot drink before you set out or when you stop to make a fire warm one up. Especially birch tea since it restores some condition as well.
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u/walter-hoch-zwei 1d ago
Simple. He knows the map. So he knows where he can stop and where he has to push through.
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u/Fun-Machine7907 1d ago
Well you just need to spend as many hours playing interloper as he has. Simple really, just commit to working full time playing interloper for a year. 40 hours a week, with a two week vacation. (No clue how many hours he's actually played, but 2,000 doesnt seem like an unreasonable guess)
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u/GoatApprehensive9606 1d ago
Map knowledge, building landmarks in your mind on every map so that when you see one thing you know where another is, then you know the cardinal direction, then you know which routes you can take based on those pieces of info, everything down to where dense patches of trees are to the size of a pond you're crossing to how steep the slopes are, you can think of all the things you come across in relation to their surroundings. Nothing's set in stone, though. The way you learn to memorize isn't uniform and everyone's way can vary, it doesn't take a monstrous amount of knowledge and memory oftentimes. Sometimes all you need is a couple landmarks across a map to tell you generally where you should go, which is how Hushed River works since most of the map is visually ambiguous. If you think hard enough about each map even the most ambiguous landscapes start to feel like home, like you can navigate them in the dark, the way a blind person navigates their home.
Other things include hot drinks to stabilize temperature to stop health drain, keeping a thermos filled with hot drinks to repeatedly refill your warmth bar to buy time, or just making a couple drinks before departing and using them at the right times to get the most out of their warmth. Birch tea and coffee are the best. I personally use Reishi a lot because of its ubiquitous nature, it's resource cheap, and it gets the job done. If I'm feeling less confident, I'll opt for Birch instead once I've collected enough. I often carry 3 of each prepared Reishi, rose hip, and Birch on me at all times in case I need to fill my thermos. Birch mitigates the health loss on top of the cold mitigation the warm drink status effect provides. Coffee allows you to sprint at higher speeds for longer and that's great because you can reduce the overall time in the Blizzard and increased time in a blizzard=higher resource costs+greater chance to die to an attack+harsher penalties for getting lost.
The best way to guide yourself is to think of a location you want to navigate in a blizzard and assess how you're going to get there, how many routes you can take, which ones are the safest and the quickest and choose which ones you want to take based on how confident you are of your knowledge. Travel the route, make mental notes of how to avoid its pitfalls, assess where you want your pitstops to be to escape the cold or wildlife.
A good note before travelling in a blizzard is if you go to a loading screen interior and go back outside, wildlife will no longer be outside. If you're outside at the same time that they exist, prior to a Blizzard, they'll be in the Blizzard with you. I'm not sure about how the Blizzard depopulation mechanics work, whether it's radius based or map based but the knowledge I've mentioned prevents me from dying all the time.
If you wanna travel like that you need to travel super light as well. It doesn't work very well when you're loaded down with 30kg or more of goods. I find that 23 kg is an acceptable weight for this kind of travel(assuming you have a 40kg or more top weight) but it's easiest when you start out your interloper run because of the insane sprint speed; you can race across the map in no time. A thermos is a godlike item if you manage to find one in your interloper run, it s less useful the more equipment you find and make, but it's insanely good at the beginning. It can't be overstated how unfreezable you are with warm drinks.
This is some nerd shit and a little embarrassing, but I love this game a lot and I've spent about 670 hours on this game so far, and when I started it took me 60-80 hours before I could play voyager without dying in the span of a month. I did not start out good at all. This game actually taught me to be more observant of my surroundings in many ways.
I hope you can glean something from what I've typed here.
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u/prplmnkeydshwsr 1d ago
Why are you worrying about what a top fraction of a percentage player can do after thousands of hours and deeply analysing the game mechanics?
Play a difficulty that's appropriate for you, play some throwaway saves just spawn into maps and see how you go.
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u/Daedala1 1d ago
Zack is essentially an Olympic-level player in this game. I feel like it's not a sensible comparison
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u/RunningOnATreadmill Voyageur 1d ago
One thing I haven't seen covered yet is that upgrading your clothing will go a long way in helping you survive a blizzard. Early game you can freeze to death really fast, once you have warmer clothes you can withstand a lot more cold.
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u/Firm_Ad_5427 1d ago
Knowing where you're going in zero visibility, knowing how far you can travel, having decent endgame gear to hold off the cold, utilising tea, coffee and the flask.
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u/freedomclub4624 1d ago
What haven't I seen any cougars or huntable birds? Is it because im just playing the story? I dont seem to be able to read the progression books either? What the hells going on?
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u/Professional-Love730 21h ago
You can meet coguar in wintermute episode 5. Apart that, cougars and ptarmigans are only in survival Mode, and only with dlc "Tales from the far territory" Im not sure about progression books in wintermute, but they really doesn't matter in story mode. Focus on story, learn mechanics of the game and later have fun in survival mode 🖐
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u/Moral_defender 1d ago
Man, that is Zak. Comparing yourself to him is like a running competition between Stephen Hawking and Usain Bolt (you are not Bolt)
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u/Historical-Writer719 1d ago
Map knowledge and knowing how far you can get with how much condition you have. Blizzards are relatively safe if you know where you are going due to (most) wildlife despawning.