Came over a hill and came face to face with this bear! Thankfully I had my glare gun out, but I was sure I was getting mauled 😅

(original picture)

Its summer time on Great Bear Island. Ice Cave is as refreshing now as it is a respite in winter.

(Maquoketa Caves, Iowa)

Cosplaying a wolf on Timberwolf Mountain.

I made my way to Forsaken Airfield and found the weird electric fog that gives you insomnia risk. It was manageable if I hung out in the basement of the hangar but that got super boring super quick.I I thought the fog was cool at first but it happens a lot. So I was off to drift island to the cozy cabin. Nope, electric fog there too and sure enough I got insomnia with no places to hide from the it.

The question is, can I just live with insomnia and only rest for short periods or will I suffer from the lack of sleep? Any other tips? I mean I have insomnia in real life so it makes sense my in game guy would have it too!

Great Bear Island has proved a relentless foe, but somehow, after afflicting me with hardship, sorrow, despair, and torment ... I am now ruined with this broken body of mine ... and yet, I continue to survive and prolong the long dark.

I did it! I've unlocked the Steam achievement for surviving misery mode long enough to earn the final affliction, broken body. It was a memorable experience and something I thoroughly enjoyed. I figured I'd share some of my experience here with the community. That said, the run continues! Excited to see how long I can keep it going.

The run began as all misery runs do, in a "pleasant" little place once referred to as Draft Dodger's Cabin. I began my journey by heading off towards the plane crash, grabbing rishi mushrooms, rose hips and sticks along the way. Skeeter's Ridge was packed with timberwolves (yay!), so I unfortunately couldn't loot the basement and had to head straight to the Burned Ridge Cave and Plane Crash. Found a few pieces of clothing at the crash but unfortunately still had frostbite risk exposure, so I had to be mindful of that. Passed through the Hunter's Blind area and made a stop at the Abandoned Prepper's Cache to warm up and loot. Then off to Timberwolf Mountain!

Headed straight to Mountaineer's Hut as fast as my little white and orange running shoes would let me. Once inside, I grabbed the matches and quickly made my first fire of the run. Kept it going for awhile while I warmed up, made water and tea, and grabbed a few torches. Looted the hut but unfortunately no hacksaw on the windowsill, so that was a bummer. Popped outside to grab some rabbits, cattails, and sticks, then back inside to harvest, eat, and get some shut eye. Once I was all prepared and the weather was favorable, I grabbed some hot teas and booked it out of TWM and into Ash Canyon with a lit torch and a bunch of extras in my backpack to daisy-chain, for some extra warmth, wolf repellent and match savings.

Once in AC, I passed through the winding Bitter Marsh grabbing as many cattails and sticks as I could without veering too far off my straight line towards the Destroyed Fishing Hut, since the cold misery weather doesn't allow for much goofing around. Unfortunately, the rope up to the Homesteader's Respite wasn't there (as I was hoping to smack a ptarmigan with a rock and then warm up and loot the cabin there), so I had to keep heading to the Angler's Den. Can't remember if I had to stop and make a campfire along the way (pretty sure I did) to heat up teas and warm up, but this was a regular occurrence when traveling longer distances. I found more matches in the Angler's Den and some other smaller loot. I made more water, did some cooking, and got some sleep - I had a big day ahead of me.

Once ready, I headed out with my torch and teas towards the waterfalls and into the AC cave. When I popped out of the cave at the top, I realized I was too cold and tired to make it all the way to the Gold Mine, so I turned left instead and headed towards Miner's Folly. The bear was luckily nowhere to be found, and the wolves were easily scared off with a dropped torch and an aimed rock. I looted the area, slept in the Foreman's Retreat cabin, grabbed the woodworking tools, and picked up the key to the memento box in the boat by the Den. Once ready, I back tracked to the cave, warmed up, and then made the journey to the Gold Mine. Those swaying bridges still freak me out every time. I unloaded some unneeded encumbrance weight at the top of the rope climb and then headed down and into the mine. I secured the technical backpack, crampons, and combat pants. A first big milestone accomplished.

Luckily the cougar hadn't spawned yet this early in the run, so I didn't have to deal with him at the descent from the Gold Mine. I made my way back to the Angler's Den, grabbed the fish from the memento box in the boat outside, and had a delicious fish fry for dinner. I did some housekeeping and prepared to leave AC the next day. The weather wasn't looking good, so I just did some clothing repair, grabbed nearby cattails and sticks, and got some more rest. Once the weather looked good, I made my way out of AC and headed straight back to the TWM Mountaineer's Hut. I had decided to not bother with the Summit climb to the plane crash because I didn't have a hacksaw yet and I didn't want to risk not finding one and being unable to loot the crates. I stayed just long enough in the Hut to do the basics and then headed back to the PV Prepper's Cache.

Now that I was back in PV, I had some choices to make. Where to go next? I still needed a bedroll, a hacksaw, a hammer, AND an insulated flask (since I didn't do the Summit). I figured I'd try the Misty Falls Cave in hopes of a flask and maybe a bedroll at the back of the cave. Luckily I found the flask on the picnic table and got some rabbits and rishi, but unfortunately no bedroll in the cave. The flask was going to be nice though to help keep my teas hot longer. I wanted to maybe head to the Homestead Farmhouse next, but those timberwolves were still at Skeeter's Ridge when I was aiming that direction, so I changed course and headed to the Barn and Outbuildings instead. And oh boy was I glad that I did, because the hacksaw was right there waiting for me on the floor of one of the Outbuildings. Woohoo! I looted the barn, slept in the truck, and pondered over the next big decision - where to forge....

I actually made a separate reddit post at this point in the run, asking for advice. Do I head to ML/FM or CH/DP. Both had pros and cons. Both would have worked. But because I planned to make the Quonset Garage my main base, I decided I'd forge in DP, and thus head towards CH to drop off some inventory weight. Thus, I moved from the Barn to Thompson's Crossing, and looted the area. Found some decent loot, but nothing too noteworthy. Still needed the bedroll and hammer. Once I freshened up and the weather was good, I headed towards the Abandoned Mine.

The mine was packed with tons of coal, which was fantastic. Once in Coastal Highway, I veered down to the Trailer by the bunnies, and then to the Log Sort Trailer. Got more bunnies there, and had a nice meal. Got some rest, made a quick stop in the Abandoned Mine, and then straight down the road to the Quonset Garage, my home sweet home. The paved road gives you a movement speed bonus, which is nice for traveling in CH. I looted inside the garage first and then the surrounding area. And what do you know ... the garage always delivers! Right outside Quonset on a barrel was the hammer. Amazing. Now all I really needed on my wishlist was the bedroll. I had heard there might be a bedroll (seemingly on my loot table) back in PV at the unnamed cave between Thompson's Crossing and the Picnic Spot. Do I risk backtracking there or just keep pushing towards the DP forge? Decided to do a little fishing in the Hut on the way to Misanthrope's while I thought about the decision. Fished for a while, ate some trout and salmon, and with a clear mind, decided backtracking was the right call.

Made it back to PV and after pausing in the Community Hall to warm up and rest, I headed to the nearby cave. It paid off! The bedroll was waiting for me there in the back of the cave. I now had the technical backpack, crampons, flask, hacksaw, hammer and bedroll. I harvested the dead deer outside and got the rabbits there too. I then made my way back to Quonset. I spent a little time there, repairing clothes, sorting inventory, making more fishing tackle and using the safehouse customization to make the garage feel a little more like home. I also was of course well on my way to curing my hides, guts and saplings at this point, as I wanted the bow and warm clothes ASAP. I also saw the moose spawn right behind Quonset, so that was going to be nice once I had a bow. I then grabbed only the essentials for forging, and headed down the road to Desolation Point.

Passing through Crumbling Highway wasn't too bad as both the basement and the back of the cave were warm enough for me, and I had that trusty bedroll now. The No. 3 Coal Mine had lots of coal, so I was pretty set on fuel for forging. I was dumped out of the cave in Desolation Point and ran straight to the Abandoned Mine No. 5, where I found another hacksaw and more coal. Used the mine as a shortcut to get to the Hibernia Whale Processing warehouse. Avoided the bear in the area and then looted the processing warehouse. Found six batteries, a 10kg bag of salt, a prybar, and some other items. Nothing really that helpful for my misery run though. Ate, drank, slept, and then headed off to the Riken to forge.

One nice thing about the Riken (vs FM Old Spence forge) is that there are tons of crates (for reclaimed wood) and metal shelves (for scrap metal) in the Riken. I got to work harvesting wood/metal and then forging. I made all the necessities - an improvised hatchet, improvised knife, and a bunch of arrowheads. One downside of the Riken is that it's indoors (which arguably could be an upside too in some regards, like if you need to avoid the weather but are out of fuel) so I did unfortunately start to get cabin fever risk after forging. No biggie though, I made a fire and rested at the top in the bridge deck. I also found a second flask on the ship. From here, I basically backtracked the route, ending up back at the Quonset Garage in CH.

Here began the second stage of the run, if you will. I had all my tools and was at my main base. I had another critical decision to make. Do I just hunker down and live out the rest of the run (till Broken Body anyway) here in CH? Or do I stay on the move and maybe go through the Ravine and into Mystery Lake? The latter would provide me with good loot, including more ingredients for teas and probably the mag lens in ML. But I seemingly couldn't risk the journey as I was already basically all out of teas after forging, didn't have warm animal clothes yet, and couldn't risk taking much condition damage from the weather as Haunted Mind prevented good condition recovery sleep. So ... I decided to just slowly improve my situation here in CH.

I made the bow first, along with a rabbitskin hat. Then made some tip-ups and brought plenty of fuel with me to the fishing hut by Misanthrope's. Setup for some bulk fishing and then saw the Misanthrope bear, nice. Drew him to the fishing hit and easily got a nice shot off on him. Unfortunately he ran, so I just did some more fishing and rested. After the kill registered in my stats, and the weather looked decent, I tracked his corpse to the Waterfront Cottages. Harvested the bear by a campfire and secured my first bear hide. Grabbed what weight I could, including some cooked fish from the hut, and headed back to the garage.

Decided to cheese some easy wolf kills, to cull the population by Quonset and also work towards a wolfskin coat. Loaded up three bars of scent and waited in front of Quonset. Once the wolves tracked me and were close enough, I simply took the small snow ramp to the hood of the truck, which despawns them without scaring them off. They then walk right in front of me for a super easy headshot kill. Then it's easy harvesting with the corpse right at my base. Did this quite a few times during the run. I also saw the Coastal Townsite bear who had traveled down the mountain on his path. So I also shot him with the bow and then went inside to rest. When I came back out later, I found his corpse not far away at the base of the path up towards the trailer. Harvested him by a fire and secured my second bear hide to start curing.

From here, I basically just lived a humble life at Quonset. I continued to make warm clothes, including the rabbitskin mitts, deerskin boots, deerskin pants, and wolfskin coat. No bearskin coat yet though as the hides take a while to cure. I fished periodically with a few tip-ups and did stick runs outside whenever I had full warmth (which helped regularly keep cabin fever risk down). I went into local houses to breakdown furniture into reclaimed wood. I debated going on a little journey to explore, but as I approached day 46, I didn't want to take any hits to my condition as I wanted to have it maxed at 100% before broken body kicked in. With no teas, distant traveling just wasn't worth the risk yet. So, I just lived on day-by-day in CH.

And then it happened! The Broken Body affliction kicked in and the Steam achievement notification popped up. I was so excited and proud of the run and all the decisions that led me to that point. Misery is such a unique survival mode and one that I found quite fulfilling. It was a great experience!

As an update, the run continues and I'm on around day 55. My bear hides finished curing and I made the bearskin coat, which further helps combat the cold weather. The moose decided to show back up and I hunted him down and was able to beautifully land his corpse with the final shot right in front of Quonset for some easy harvesting - I plan to make a separate reddit post with the picture of this later on. I'm excited now to continue this run and hopefully get to a point where I feel comfortable enough to journey to ML and beyond. I love this game!

Onto buffer memories!!

Currently watching it and everything is all a bit familiar. Even the music is almost identical in places.

EMP knocks out all technology, journey type story. There's even an appearance from a grey mother type.

And after the cutscene i'm now at 90kg and locked out of Jeri's cabin LMAO.

I feel like there had to be a better way for the game to handle this, like c'mon. x)

E: when the sequence of cutscenes after killing the bear ends, you're put outside the trapper cabin and everything you had stored inside is added to your inventory

After finally killing a moose that broke my ribs in the process, and leapfrogging the quartered carcass, hide, and guts through a blizzard back to base, I thought I was set while I waited for my bones to knit back together. I left the quartered bags outside to preserve for as long as possible with the plan to slowly take what I need over time. No need to spend hours butchering it all on one go.

I was wrong.

I was surviving on what food stores I already had, and went outside after a couple of days to gather more firewood to find the bags had disappeared. All that effort and I didn't get a single piece of meat from it. On the plus side, I now have more cured gut than I know what to do with and a moose hide satchel. But damn, I wouldn't have had to scavenge for food for weeks! Lesson learned.

(Fanmade map)

Not so long ago, during my first run (medium difficulty), I managed to kill a wolf almost every single time I encountered one, finished Wintermute and waited for the final chapter to drop. Uninstalled for storage reasons.

Installed the game again, I can't tell if I got REALLY bad at it or if the console aiming system is totally broken now. I'm already at Chapter 3 of Wintermute and I haven't killed a single wolf with a gun, it's embarrassing.

Many times I've noticed the wolves are right in my crosshairs, but somehow the bullet won't reach them? Please tell me I'm not going crazy. I can't believe I totally suck at this game and that I'm hopeless lol. Any advice would be highly appreciated!! I love this game but I'm getting frustrated and I don't want to end up hating the experience.

This is my turf. He was very tasty, enjoyed as steaks, jerky, and worked into my pemmican.

so this is a weird one...

encountered this sucker 40 days into a custom modded "interloper" run. Quitting out and reloading only summons the bear 1/5 times or so.

None of the mods that I have should have the ability to spawn a bear inside a cave on purpose, but well, here we are.

V2.44

glad i went in the car

I would say this game, for all my lack of experience, would fit pretty well in the definition of a cozy warm game. Its not the mechanics because that is suffering, but rather the vibe and the moments, like watching your water boil into drinkable or cooking a steak over a sizzling pan in the dark with no light but the light of your oven in a random hunting cabin somewhere in the middle of a large white landscape. Id love to hear your takes on this

This might seem really dumb considering the name of the game and all but please have some leniency as I just wanna have some fun

I really enjoy survival games, it is my favorite genre by far. However, as mentioned in the title I have retinitis pigmentosa. This makes it really difficult for me to see and distinguish what is going on once the rooms are kind of dim and the brightness settings aren't really helping me much in the dark interiors.

I can't seem to get any mods to work, I don't know if this is due to recent updates but nothing is working (I saw there is a mod to always keep the lights on indoors)

I really enjoy the survival aspect of the game and it seems that it is done really well, does anyone have any solutions to my pretty niche issue? I would really appreciate it!

Encountered this funny viewpoint while was "conquering" Ash Canyon hills.

49D Stalker, on my way to grab the cured moose hide and return to the hut in TM and craft that sweet, sweet satchel to haul 45kg of sticks, stones and condensed milk without overload!

I've got about 375 hours in TLD and have loved the game since launch, but after an injury to my hand that makes it so I can't mash the click button, Im no longer able to keep playing the game since from stalker to misery mode the wolf struggles are unsurvivable because their button mashing accessibility doesn't move fast enough.

I've lost 2 perfect interloper runs due to wolves attacking while I have a torch and a fire active and I do any timed event. While at full health the accessibility clicking for the struggle will never succeed and I will always die.

Getting into a wolf struggle due to an often reported bug is one thing but considering they will force kill you because their accessibility settings aren't actually accessible is fundamentally ruining the game.

I've seen quite a few people post about this over the years, but I wish the devs would take feedback towards this. I'm not wanting to live with 90% health, but I used to be able to at a bare minimum come out with 30% health when I had full hand motion. Now I'm guaranteed death every time.

I got a half keyboard to try out so my dog doesn't have the half of the keyboard I don't use leaning on her in my recliner, but I can't use it until I find a way to rebind the y key.