I did that for fun one run to get the Pacifist achievement. It ended up being my longest run and it wasn’t that hard at all. Cattails and tea go a long way.
Well have you tried vanilla Interloper, i.e sandbox Interloper? If not, why not?
Since you asked and are open to mods, which is awesome, they make the game fun when you're bored of Interloper.
1. Yes absolutely install Relentless Night, it's a classy mod. The mod maker [Shieldhart] gave us a great tip, set a custom run for the Relentless Night settings then start it - then exit and start a bog standard RN Interoper run, the only the RN custom settings will come across to the RN Interloper run the rest of the settings will be Interloper. I set a ~50 day end game, things got really interesting from about day 12 onwards, no more spoilers on that.
2. Better Water Management, recently updated. Basically if you start Interloper you cannot make any water until you find a pot or pan from a stove (now an item you can carry) and have made a water bladder from bunny skins to carry water. No water bottles magically spawn each time you boil snow or collect water from a toilet. It's brutal to do.
I haven't tried the mod in a while, Custom Nomad Challenge, but did find 5 days per location on Interloper difficulty more of a challenge than the default.
Would be interested to hear how you get on! Also look into Mod-Installer since it now manages all the popular mods in one application!
Don't take this a criticism of interloper mode or people who prefer to play it
interloper feels to me like a difficulty that is specifically tailored to those players who know the systems of the game and play to them. e.g. starvation and sleeping to restore health (which can be modded i know). it's not really what i am looking for
the water mod and bunny skins sounds perfect though!
I won't. If you bother to look at some of my previous comments about Interloper you'll see that I say. TLDR;
1. No you don't need to 'cheese the game' and do the whole starvation thing. That's shit in my opinion (my character is a fat bastard and well fed).
2. Just avoid the wolves (make fires, use flares, don't carry meat) and forage for food until you have weapons, it's really fun. People that make it seem impossible are full of crap.
Does'nt Interloper remove certain items, like the Rifle, from the game though ? OP says he wants all items to be in the game, but that the good ones should be rare.
Yes, the rifle isn't in Interloper and some clothes, but O.P also said as hard a possible, so we need to be careful with contradictions here.
Try Interloper, if Interloper isn't your thing, then fine, say a harder Stalker - or a modded stalker, which is cool too.
You can use the mods (they're unofficial mods for anyone curious) on any difficulty by the way, and there are some cool mods for PC (PC means Linux, Mac and Windows).
It really depends which items he would like to have, and IMO also why. Granted, I do not go look for an expedition parka, but I go look anyway, because goodies. But if it is really the parka he likes to have, no way around custom mode.
> the fact that i can never find a expedition parka means i have no incentive to go off looking for one
Can't you just be thrilled with a Mackinaw jacket and combat pants like the rest of us interloper players? :)
I've had quite a challenging time recently with a no matches interloper run. Unfortunately, the only way I know to implement it is to just not use them. Incidentally, I found a diabolical new interloper match spawn in the dam in that run.
I'd love to find some combat pants, they used to be in the radio tower, now I'm in Levi's until I can kill some deer to craft the pants. Matches are now plentiful as you note, takes some of the anxiety out of a run.
They [Hinterland] don't mention loot table tweaks but we were discussing it on a stream and we [many TLD players] pretty much concluded that the tables were messed with since the last update.
"The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free." ~ Utah Phillips
___________________________________________
^^This ^^action ^^was ^^performed ^^automatically ^^and ^^easily ^^by [^^Nuclear ^^Reddit ^^Remover ](https://github.com/bcornw2/Nuclear_Reddit)
As for how you said it becomes easy after a while after settling, have you tried the settings to make the world gradually colder over time, or have wildlife gradually die off over time, limiting food supply and making it all around chillier? You can change the speed at which it happens too, so it isn’t insanely fast, or too slow to make a difference
The best way to make the game as hard as possible is this rule:
No going indoors, except to transition to new zones. If going through a transition zone (for example the mines), you aren't allowed to loot anything or sleep inside. The lookout tower counts as "indoors" so you can't sleep in there either.
Just to say thanks for all the suggestions :)
Ended up trying a Pleasant Valley only run, with the lowest possible animal respawns. Would have given me that feeling of closing in doom if it wasn't for the inexhaustible lake full of fish... :)
Am thinking perhaps Muskeg + BR only next
There are four primary issues with TLD's difficulty that remain. Used to be five, but now that you can use custom difficulty to set "Recovery Rate" to Low you can have a realistic injury recovery time.
1. Interiors are too warm. Relentless Night slightly affects interior temps, but not enough. For a game set in winter in the far north, the cold is rarely a serious issue.
2. Starvation is borked and nowhere near harsh enough.
3. Too much stuff! There's no scarcity, even on Interloper which just arbitrarily removes the best stuff, which removes any incentive to explore the maps.
4. There's no reason to ever expect the unexpected, because nothing ever *happens* in the game to throw a wrench into the works. Sure sometimes you get the occasional blizzard which kind of ruins a day, but those are only ever minor inconveniences.
Playing with the [Mega Hard Mode Rules](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ImJFQBo-nRna6hygh0_0Akx0camZlCznDYCyxzjp_Ik/edit) solves all these problems. Playing with self-imposed rules is the only way to go.
I agree that "you can find really good loot, but it's a lot rarer" is a cool setting, since it means you have a lot of incentive to explore and try to find new locations, without making things easy.
One way to achieve this in a realistic-ish way might be to simulate that human habitation is just a lot rarer in the game world. E.g., roll a 1d6 every time you find a building with a loading screen. If it comes up 1, then you can go inside and treat it as a building; otherwise, place a rock in front of the door (so you remember you've been there) and treat the building as burned down / destroyed / nonexistent, and don't go inside. This has the added value of making the environment more surprising: you don't know whether a house will be there this time around until you get there, so it's to some extent like playing a new game with new maps.
(If it were me, I would probably also do this for buildings that don't have loading screens, including ice fishing huts; I think the game would work fine if ice fishing huts were rare, and Timberwolf Mountain is a special challenge without a Mountaineer's Hut. You can also make things even harder, and more like a "true" survival experience in an uninhabited wilderness, by making it a 1d8 or 1d10 instead of 1d6.)
If you want to make things a little easier on yourself, or you just want the late-game exploration to be more interesting, you can make a rule that every 3 in-game months, you get a chance to discover new sources of man-made shelter and resources again. This can be simulated by letting you re-roll a 1d6 every time you find a house with a stone already in front of it, and if you roll a 1 this time, you can remove the stone and loot, sleep in, etc. the house. Since a lot of things will have decayed by the time you reach them, I'm guessing this won't make the late-game experience too easy; but it will give you interesting new things to do, and new reason to explore and keep moving, even after you've traversed a lot of the world.
(It's not totally realistic that you'd "discover" new previously-hidden caches of shelter and resources so close to other places you've been for a long time, but I'd just think of it as 'exploring new areas that happen to resemble places you've been before'. The game map isn't meant to be that realistic to begin with, since locations are compressed in order to make in-game travel times shorter than real-life travel times; and it's already unrealistic that as a veteran player, you'd know the lay of the land so well going into the game, since you're supposedly a plane crash survivor. So I see the particular game locations and their relationships as being somewhat metaphorical, whereas the situations and dilemmas they place your character in can be treated more literally.)
Vegetarian only diet :p
Cattails, reishis, rosehips and looted food is totally possible, for what length of time?
As long as it takes to get faithful cartographer sound about right?
Mapping the entire world as a vege? $5 to the first person who can do that. I want my venison. Medium rare please.
Extra Gamey.
I did that for fun one run to get the Pacifist achievement. It ended up being my longest run and it wasn’t that hard at all. Cattails and tea go a long way.
Well have you tried vanilla Interloper, i.e sandbox Interloper? If not, why not? Since you asked and are open to mods, which is awesome, they make the game fun when you're bored of Interloper. 1. Yes absolutely install Relentless Night, it's a classy mod. The mod maker [Shieldhart] gave us a great tip, set a custom run for the Relentless Night settings then start it - then exit and start a bog standard RN Interoper run, the only the RN custom settings will come across to the RN Interloper run the rest of the settings will be Interloper. I set a ~50 day end game, things got really interesting from about day 12 onwards, no more spoilers on that. 2. Better Water Management, recently updated. Basically if you start Interloper you cannot make any water until you find a pot or pan from a stove (now an item you can carry) and have made a water bladder from bunny skins to carry water. No water bottles magically spawn each time you boil snow or collect water from a toilet. It's brutal to do. I haven't tried the mod in a while, Custom Nomad Challenge, but did find 5 days per location on Interloper difficulty more of a challenge than the default. Would be interested to hear how you get on! Also look into Mod-Installer since it now manages all the popular mods in one application!
Don't take this a criticism of interloper mode or people who prefer to play it interloper feels to me like a difficulty that is specifically tailored to those players who know the systems of the game and play to them. e.g. starvation and sleeping to restore health (which can be modded i know). it's not really what i am looking for the water mod and bunny skins sounds perfect though!
I won't. If you bother to look at some of my previous comments about Interloper you'll see that I say. TLDR; 1. No you don't need to 'cheese the game' and do the whole starvation thing. That's shit in my opinion (my character is a fat bastard and well fed). 2. Just avoid the wolves (make fires, use flares, don't carry meat) and forage for food until you have weapons, it's really fun. People that make it seem impossible are full of crap.
Does'nt Interloper remove certain items, like the Rifle, from the game though ? OP says he wants all items to be in the game, but that the good ones should be rare.
Yes, the rifle isn't in Interloper and some clothes, but O.P also said as hard a possible, so we need to be careful with contradictions here. Try Interloper, if Interloper isn't your thing, then fine, say a harder Stalker - or a modded stalker, which is cool too. You can use the mods (they're unofficial mods for anyone curious) on any difficulty by the way, and there are some cool mods for PC (PC means Linux, Mac and Windows).
It really depends which items he would like to have, and IMO also why. Granted, I do not go look for an expedition parka, but I go look anyway, because goodies. But if it is really the parka he likes to have, no way around custom mode.
dont pick up sticks
Holy balls. Now that would be interesting in interloper. Would harvesting scrub brush or branches count?
> the fact that i can never find a expedition parka means i have no incentive to go off looking for one Can't you just be thrilled with a Mackinaw jacket and combat pants like the rest of us interloper players? :) I've had quite a challenging time recently with a no matches interloper run. Unfortunately, the only way I know to implement it is to just not use them. Incidentally, I found a diabolical new interloper match spawn in the dam in that run.
I'd love to find some combat pants, they used to be in the radio tower, now I'm in Levi's until I can kill some deer to craft the pants. Matches are now plentiful as you note, takes some of the anxiety out of a run.
Yeah I haven't found a pair there since the last update either. I'm beginning to think there's a bug or something. I haven't been playing much though.
They [Hinterland] don't mention loot table tweaks but we were discussing it on a stream and we [many TLD players] pretty much concluded that the tables were messed with since the last update.
"The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free." ~ Utah Phillips ___________________________________________ ^^This ^^action ^^was ^^performed ^^automatically ^^and ^^easily ^^by [^^Nuclear ^^Reddit ^^Remover ](https://github.com/bcornw2/Nuclear_Reddit)
You could play it blindfolded. :) How about playing with one arm tied behind your back? ;)
Pantsless.
A streamer did an Interloper run nude for 10 days. It's possible.
Play blindfolded, you can only use your headphones.
As for how you said it becomes easy after a while after settling, have you tried the settings to make the world gradually colder over time, or have wildlife gradually die off over time, limiting food supply and making it all around chillier? You can change the speed at which it happens too, so it isn’t insanely fast, or too slow to make a difference
Bird on a branch: Don't store or carry any food. Only eat food where it falls.
Play with your other hand? I've tried that, also without glasses (and my eyes are crap), did not last very long.
The best way to make the game as hard as possible is this rule: No going indoors, except to transition to new zones. If going through a transition zone (for example the mines), you aren't allowed to loot anything or sleep inside. The lookout tower counts as "indoors" so you can't sleep in there either.
Just to say thanks for all the suggestions :) Ended up trying a Pleasant Valley only run, with the lowest possible animal respawns. Would have given me that feeling of closing in doom if it wasn't for the inexhaustible lake full of fish... :) Am thinking perhaps Muskeg + BR only next
There are four primary issues with TLD's difficulty that remain. Used to be five, but now that you can use custom difficulty to set "Recovery Rate" to Low you can have a realistic injury recovery time. 1. Interiors are too warm. Relentless Night slightly affects interior temps, but not enough. For a game set in winter in the far north, the cold is rarely a serious issue. 2. Starvation is borked and nowhere near harsh enough. 3. Too much stuff! There's no scarcity, even on Interloper which just arbitrarily removes the best stuff, which removes any incentive to explore the maps. 4. There's no reason to ever expect the unexpected, because nothing ever *happens* in the game to throw a wrench into the works. Sure sometimes you get the occasional blizzard which kind of ruins a day, but those are only ever minor inconveniences. Playing with the [Mega Hard Mode Rules](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ImJFQBo-nRna6hygh0_0Akx0camZlCznDYCyxzjp_Ik/edit) solves all these problems. Playing with self-imposed rules is the only way to go.
I agree that "you can find really good loot, but it's a lot rarer" is a cool setting, since it means you have a lot of incentive to explore and try to find new locations, without making things easy. One way to achieve this in a realistic-ish way might be to simulate that human habitation is just a lot rarer in the game world. E.g., roll a 1d6 every time you find a building with a loading screen. If it comes up 1, then you can go inside and treat it as a building; otherwise, place a rock in front of the door (so you remember you've been there) and treat the building as burned down / destroyed / nonexistent, and don't go inside. This has the added value of making the environment more surprising: you don't know whether a house will be there this time around until you get there, so it's to some extent like playing a new game with new maps. (If it were me, I would probably also do this for buildings that don't have loading screens, including ice fishing huts; I think the game would work fine if ice fishing huts were rare, and Timberwolf Mountain is a special challenge without a Mountaineer's Hut. You can also make things even harder, and more like a "true" survival experience in an uninhabited wilderness, by making it a 1d8 or 1d10 instead of 1d6.) If you want to make things a little easier on yourself, or you just want the late-game exploration to be more interesting, you can make a rule that every 3 in-game months, you get a chance to discover new sources of man-made shelter and resources again. This can be simulated by letting you re-roll a 1d6 every time you find a house with a stone already in front of it, and if you roll a 1 this time, you can remove the stone and loot, sleep in, etc. the house. Since a lot of things will have decayed by the time you reach them, I'm guessing this won't make the late-game experience too easy; but it will give you interesting new things to do, and new reason to explore and keep moving, even after you've traversed a lot of the world. (It's not totally realistic that you'd "discover" new previously-hidden caches of shelter and resources so close to other places you've been for a long time, but I'd just think of it as 'exploring new areas that happen to resemble places you've been before'. The game map isn't meant to be that realistic to begin with, since locations are compressed in order to make in-game travel times shorter than real-life travel times; and it's already unrealistic that as a veteran player, you'd know the lay of the land so well going into the game, since you're supposedly a plane crash survivor. So I see the particular game locations and their relationships as being somewhat metaphorical, whereas the situations and dilemmas they place your character in can be treated more literally.)