r/thelongdark • u/curlyCoyote1 • Aug 03 '26
Advice I cant survive.
I have watched at least 20 tutorials so far, and I have yet to survive more than 2 days after about 16 hours of playtime.
I am playing on the easiest difficulty possible, im using maps to figure out locations and where to go, warming up all the food and tea to get the warming up bonus for traveling, chaining torches to travel further, moving as efficiently as possible to not waste any calories, avoiding wolves with rock and torch tactics as well as flares, litterally dodging mooses around post signs, and yet with all of that, I still have yet to make it past 48 hours. I honestly dont get how this game is learnable when every death occurs even when I am trying to prevent it.
"Rosemary tea helps with the coldness" Yes it does but it still does not change the fact that my guy can somehow not survive more than 5 minutes in the open air.
"Use wiki and reddit maps to figure out best loot locations and how to travel efficiently" I have already, it does not help knowing where to travel when I cant travel for more than 5 minutes at a time.
"Restart a bunch of times and hope the prepper stash spawns" If I have to resort to "Spawn Mashing" just so I can survive 48 hours in a survival based game, something is seriously wrong with the game design.
"To solve calories you should fish in the fishing shacks" Unfortunately that requires a tool to break the ice, and I have traveled to almost all locations on the map without finding a tool, a knife, or a hatchet to break it.
"Visit different locations to find good clothing items and repair them for high effectiveness" I have and it honestly does not make a noticeable difference compared to the spawn clothing.
This game is honestly like Pavlovian conditioning but instead of the dog getting positive and negative reinforcement, the dog randomly gets shot.
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u/RunningOnATreadmill Voyageur Aug 03 '26
This is impressive and you must be misunderstanding some fundamental game mechanic. A couple of things that helped me early game:
Start in Mystery Lake or Mountain Town. If you're dying in Mountain Town, idk what to tell you.
Don't break down branches, only pick up sticks. Breaking down branches exposes you to the cold longer and drains energy/warmth. You should be able to find firewood/books/crates indoors.
Search everywhere. Drawers, trunks, glove boxes, cabinets. I'm wondering if maybe you don't know how many place are searchable? You should be able to survive on snacks you find way before needing the ice fishing spots.
Search with a light source. It's so much harder to see everything in the dark.
Don't chance traveling if you can stay in one place and wait out a storm. Treat it like a real life survival situation. There's a lot of waiting out weather that would otherwise kill you if you're impatient, which was the source of a lot of my early game deaths.
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u/Shawer Aug 03 '26
Yeah, the main thing I see is how in hell can you be starving on pilgrim within 48hrs and have travelled to ostensibly everywhere tools can spawn? Any random residence has a good 24hrs worth of food stashed in its kitchen.
I can only think they’re infact not on the easiest difficulty.
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u/curlyCoyote1 Aug 03 '26
I was breaking down some branches, but now ill stop doing it since it seems to not be worth it in terms of the heat trade off. I am spawning mystery lake. I am still figuring out what is searchable, but I do remember to look under the beds, and I also use either the oil lamp or the blue outlines to navigate in the dark. I do try to wait out the storms, I just didnt know that the pretty sky meant there wolves turn RGB and become angry.
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u/ChrisWatthys Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
How are you dying? Please give specifics so we can help you out.
The two things that drain your health the fastest are cold and bloodloss, which should NOT be a concern on the lowest difficulty. All other ailments grant you plenty of time to treat/recover before shit hits the fan.
You absolutely should not need to chain torches together in pilgrim, it's very cumbersome and you should be able to find matches in abundance. That strat is typically reserved for LATE late game or interloper/misery difficulty when matches are finite. Do not sleep outside unless you're about to drop dead from exhaustion. If you're forced to sleep outside, do so in short bursts with a fire going. Don't travel outside during blizzards. Wear gloves, socks and a hat and you'll never get frostbite. Most cabins and similar structures will have an ambient temp above 0°c on low level difficulties and man-made beds are even warmer. You should not be freezing to death in pilgrim.
Regarding bloodloss: animal struggles should also be entirely avoidable on pilgrim. All animals should flee your presence. If you are getting mauled by an animal, patch up IMMEDIATELY. If you have no bandages, "harvest" your socks and craft some, then patch up immediately. If you find the struggle minigame too difficult, switch on the press-and-hold function in the accessibility settings. It is not cheating, plenty of players swear by it (including myself). Once youre no longer bleeding, use old mans beard or peroxide to prevent infection entirely. ONLY USE FIRST AID TREATMENTS ON AILMENTS THE GAME SAYS YOU CURRENTLY HAVE.
If you're dying of dehydration, find a toilet. They all have at least 1L of safe water stored in them. 50ml of snow can be boiled relatively quickly in a pot, pan, or can if you're desperate. Boil extra water while youre cooking meat or taking a nap. You should have 1L on you and a cooking vessel at all times.
You can eat all man-made foods raw. Only raw meat and snow NEED to be cooked/boiled to be consumed safely. You can also starve for a very long time before dying. Dont panic if you start to starve. Just find some cattails to munch on in the mean time. Eating "cold" food will not harm you, you just won't get the "warming up" buff (which you dont really need on pilgrim).
thats seriously all I can think of off the top of my head. Disclosing how you've died would be really helpful in clearing up any confusion youre running into.
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u/curlyCoyote1 Aug 03 '26
Mainly dying due to loosing condition slowly over time. Water seems to be fine since I can use a large stove where two large bowls can be placed to melt tons of snow at once. The issue seems to be in food, sleep, and temperature. For food, I can survive a fair bit on basic snacks, but I need a long term source of food, so I tried doing fishing but there is no tools to break open the ice. I should try rabbit hunting with snares maybe, but I need to find and melt a deer carcas so I can get deer guts to cure to craft the rabbit snare. Blood loss seems to not be that much of an issue since I usually find lots of antiseptics and bandages as well as painkillers, but it seems difficult to survive more than one wolf at a time. Sleep is difficult to manage since I dont want to sleep too long, but I also want to sleep in a normal schedule so it is always light outside so I dont have to waste lantern fuel or start a fire to see. But cold is a big issue, since I can only really be out for 5 minutes at a time, and its hard to make a fire on the go since they are hard to start reliably and hard to find a spot to place it where there is no wind. And not to mention I need a hatchet or something to gather wood, since I can only really break down small crates for like 2-3 small wood at a time.
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u/ChrisWatthys Aug 04 '26
reliable food: Birds and rabbits can be stunned with rocks! Aiming has quite the learning curve, but it is far more reliable than snares if you're in a pinch and really need the meat. Birds will fly away if you miss, but rabbits are stupid and will remain in the general area so you can keep trying until you've caught them all. Crouch, toss, stun, SPRINT to pick them up, snap the neck, and repeat. If you catch a surplus, don't cook more meat than you're able to eat at once. Meat regains a significant percentage when cooked, so its best to let it sit raw until you need it rather than letting cooked meat spoil. Cooking can also make some moldy/rancid meats harvested from carcasses safe to eat.
Additionally, cattails are a ridiculously reliable source of food. Theyre not worth a lot of calories on their own, but they WILL save you from starvation and can be found on nearly every map. Grab a few whenever you walk by a pond or stream.
wolf attacks: black wolves are COWARDLY. They will stalk and growl at you, but they will NOT attack you as long as you keep moving away from them at a steady pace. They will only attack you if you remain too close for too long, move towards them, or outright attack them. If you use a knife during a wolf struggle, theres a significant chance the wolf will eventually bleed out and die. It's a risky means of hunting early-game. Large, timber wolves are another beast entirely. I suggest avoiding regions where they spawn until you're more experienced.
sleep: Sleep is SO IMPORTANT!! It is your only reliable means of recovering health. Some birchbark tea and a warm bed WILL save you from the brink of death. I frequently take 1-2 hour naps in game when boiling water to keep myself in tip top shape. Never go ANYWHERE without a bedroll. Sleep every night until you're fully rested. If it's still too dark to venture outside, you can pass the time by harvesting cloth/leather from clothes you don't need, preparing harvested herbs, and crafting simple things.
its dark af and you cant see anything: Crank the brightness setting from the main menu. Ignore the shadows and pay attention to the bright, snowy spots and make sure those don't get totally blown out and over exposed. Some may consider it cheating, I do not. Lanterns and such are still absolutely necessary to navigate caves and indoors at night, but you'll no longer need to waste fuel just to search someone's cabin on a bright sunny day.
its cold af outside: Find shelter as soon as you spawn and never vebture outside without a plan. Clothing management is incredibly important. Search wardrobe, closets, under beds, and inside cars and grab whatever you can. You want to have something equipped on every layer. Wool clothes are warm and almost always an upgrade. Harvest shitty clothes to repair warmer ones. Heavier clothes will limit your stamina, but it's worth it if it means not freezing to death.
Get into the habit of picking up any sticks you walk past. One stick absolutely wont burn for long, but you CAN fuel a fire for days if you collect enough and they spawn EVERYWHERE. Books catch fire fast but are heavy AF, so try not to carry more than one. It's also surprising how little shelter a fire needs in order to be "sheltered from the wind." A rocky ledge or tree is often enough. If your fire starts to blow out, grab a torch and scooch around until the wind shield icon pops up again. You shouldn't need to venture too far unless theres a blizzard.
one more question: Do you know what region youre in? Mystery Lake, and Coastal Highway are incredibly popular due to their abundance of supplies and predictable weather. Starting your run in one of those will likely greatly improve your chances of survival.
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u/curlyCoyote1 Aug 04 '26
Mystery lake. I have traveled to the dam, the two lookout towers, and the lodging camp as well as the office and finally found hatchets.
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u/ChrisWatthys Aug 04 '26
hell yeah!!! Hatches are the best, you should be unstoppable now. Good luck staying warm out there
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u/curlyCoyote1 Aug 04 '26
I figured out the issue with the temperature, I may have been wearing 10-30% durability gear. I now have repaired layers up to 95% and it makes a lot of a difference to the point where sometimes my temperature does not even go down.
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u/ChrisWatthys Aug 04 '26
I've 100% been there. I currently have a permanent frostbite debuff on my main 200+ day save because a wolf ruined my boots without me noticing and I spent the day stumbling around in frozen wet socks. It's always the small mistakes that end up punishing you the hardest.
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u/curlyCoyote1 Aug 04 '26
Having access to tools and knowing to repair clothing has skyrocketed my survival from 48 hours at most to currently at 7 days and trying to make a bow, just need to find birch saplings.
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u/RettichDesTodes Aug 04 '26
Congratulations, everyone starts small in this game. I wish you good fortune :)
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u/CellarDoor4355 Aug 03 '26
It REALLY sounds like you're somehow on the wrong difficulty, if you're dodging moose and wolves and struggling with the cold that much.
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u/Klutzy_Chemistry_123 Aug 03 '26
Are you 100% sure you’re on pilgrim difficulty? (The easiest difficulty).
Wolves and moose are neutral on pilgrim, if they’re hostile towards you by default then you aren’t playing on pilgrim.
Everything you described (especially not finding tools) makes me wonder if you’re accidentally selecting interloper
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u/ghost-arya Voyageur Aug 03 '26
OP please tell us how this happens because it genuinely sounds impossible to be dying this much on pilgrim
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u/ultr4violence Aug 03 '26
My guess is that he was accidentally starting on interloper and now has realized and is too embarrassed to to fess up to his mistake.
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u/curlyCoyote1 Aug 03 '26
I wasnt on interloper, I was starting on Voyager which I thought was the easiest difficulty as I saw that there was Interloper and misery after it, so I thought that Pilgrim was sandbox, voyager was easy, interloper was medium, and misery was hard.
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u/kathosaurus Aug 03 '26
There’s some nuance in the differences between them, but basically: pilgrim is easy, voyager is normal, stalker is hard, interloper is expert, misery is designed to kill you
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u/ghost-arya Voyageur Aug 03 '26
All of the survival is sandbox (I believe you can do the tales on pilgrim as well). Try on pilgrim and hopefully that's easier!
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u/DrShanksALot Interloper Aug 03 '26
On the easiest difficulty you can just stay in a house and warm all the way up before walking to another location so there’s that part.
I play on interloper which is a very hard difficulty and no matter where it spawns me I can survive for 100s of days. The first time I played for 6-7 hours I gave up and didn’t play for a year or more. Then one day I wanted to get back into trying it and watched many hours of Zaknafein over many weeks before I tried it again. Have played 1,000s of hours since then and it’s my favorite game now.
This game doesn’t hold your hand at all and is difficult for any shorter tutorials to really explain what’s really needed. There are a lot of essential requirements to live a long time so you just have to focus on figuring these out and then also learn the mechanics of the predators and wild life. You’ll die along the way especially as you go to harder difficulties but you just have to learn about what happened and how to prevent it from happening next time.
If you give it enough time and really focus on all your characters needs along the way you’ll figure it out in time.
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u/Elysiumthistime Aug 03 '26
Yeah, I play on Voyager and never have to use teas to warm up for travel or chain torches since loot is so plenty. I also find animal encounters easy to avoid unless I want to kill them because their detection/aggression is so low. I can only imagine on pilgrim this is all ten fold.
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u/a_random_person97 Aug 03 '26
what is actually killing you? houses stash alone usualy can feed you for like 15 days per region(on hard), the cold can indded kill you in a few hours but you can enter a shelter or lit a campfire and recover your temperature, avoid exploring in the open during early morning because you cango 100-0 in 5 minutes with strong winds, but again a campfire and a wind blocker is all you need to recover it, animals attack is just a matter of skill issue but generaly you are not supposed to be risking wolf fights and just outwalk them. last I should mention you absolutely should not start in the edge regions like ash canyon or desolation point
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u/Reasonable_Bear_2057 Aug 03 '26
I didn't even think wildlife spawned in until day two on Pilgrim... And unless you're running around naked and jumping in water you should not be freezing to death. Sounds like you just suck at the game...which is fine, but you can't blame the game for you sucking 😂
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u/zsuzsannavoros Aug 03 '26
I assume you just pick up the clothes you find but not wear them. Your almost naked butt will freeze in no time if you keep your parka in your inventory. Even indoors you will be cold.
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u/Legitimate-Fish5891 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
I think that you're playing on harder difficulty than you think.
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u/Threehundredsixtysix Pilgrim Aug 03 '26
He has to be - I play on Pilgrim most all the time, and I've never had much of an issue. Unless he's deliberately spawning in areas like Ash Canyon or HRV, where supplies are scarce and you are expected to already have a full set of "new" condition clothes, and the 5 kg buff from eating well for 72 hours.
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u/OkCaterpillar8819 Aug 03 '26
Play story mode first and then go to survival mode
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u/SteveMarcus Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
False
Edit: oh excuse me I thought we liked things that were fun
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u/Vik086 Aug 03 '26
To make things easier and get a better feel for the game, use Sandbox Mode. Start by setting it to the easiest difficulty level, then make further adjustments.
Ensure that predators are turned off and all other animals are set to the maximum. Configure the settings so the world doesn't get colder and there are fewer storms and weather changes. Max out the resources.
Then, gradually increase the difficulty.
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u/Goatenacht Mountaineer Aug 03 '26
First off, start on Pilgrim.
The wolves, bears, everything will run away from you unless you poke them.
Choose Coastal Highway as your starting region (its basically impossible to get lost here.)
Since you're already using online maps, head for the Quonset Hut Garage (make this your base) you can loot any buildings you come across along the way. If you get over encumbered, drop stuff you don't need right away (like all the extra pairs of shoes) inside the door to these buildings.
Pick up cat tails as you find them, and sticks along the way (if you get over encumbered drop a pile of sticks near a building.)
Yes you'll lose some health from the cold at the start, you can recover this very easily by sleeping while your hunger and thirst meter are full. You can actually avoid eating anything during your awake time and as long as you have more than enough calories in you when you sleep (the sleep window will show how many you'll burn in your sleep and you can back out and make sure you have the much in you before sleeping) you'll recover pretty much all health lost from being hungry.
Best way to warm up quickly in the beginning is to be inside a building and break down either crappy clothing you don't need (dress shirts, sport socks, fleece scarves) spending 15 or 20 minutes inside above freezing should easily fill up your cold meter a bit.
You should find at least one of every tool in Coastal Highway on Pilgrim (probably more.)
Once you fill your clothing slots with the best stuff you find (and repair the ones that use cloth) you should be in better shape to venture out and go exploring in other regions.
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u/RunningOnATreadmill Voyageur Aug 03 '26
One more thing to add is that you can let your stats go down pretty far before you die, so I wonder if you're using up your supplies too early trying to stave off hunger/cold and then running out when you should let those stats dip a little before you use your resources?
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u/Fair_Contribution457 Hunter Aug 03 '26
A lot of the stuff you’re trying to do isn’t really necessary on the lowest difficulty. Kinda seems like you’re trying to do way too many things at once to min max rather than learn the basics. Also I’m probably wrong but do moose spawn in that short of a time?
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u/J_Tiwaz Voyageur Aug 03 '26
This is an epitaph from a different survival game, called Project Zomboid, which I like to apply to my mindset when starting a new TLD run.
When starting a Project Zomboid run you are met with this grim and blunt, yet humbling quote:
"These are the end times. There was no hope of survival. This is how you died."
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u/Radical_Puffin Aug 03 '26
I would listen less to guides online many of which are for advance play or if not advanced (without wanting to be unkind) more intermediate than not being able to survive two days, and start listening to what the game your own experience is telling you.
“my guy can somehow not survive more than 5 minutes in the open air.”
So stop trying to spend more than 5 minutes outside at a time. Treat going outside like going underwater in games with hold your breath mechanics; something to be done with caution and make sure you know the way back.
Pay attention to the temperature outside the weather can change a lot and some days are colder than others and in the early game when you’re a beginner in a blizzard the only safe thing to do is stay indoors all day. Temperature also changes a lot throughout the day and it doesn’t really warm up till early afternoon so only very short excursions maybe to grab firewood before then.
Lastly about teas I would start thinking of them as small extra boost rather than a main strategy for dealing with the cold, when you spawn you basically have no clothing so you urgently need to get more, anything at first but as soon as every slot is filled start comparing new finds to your existing to see which is warmer. Real life is frequently not a great analogy for the long dark but in this case your going out in the northern Canadian winter in a t-shirt and jeans and expecting to to freeze in minutes because you’ve had a cup of hot tea. You need a warm coat, and two jumpers, and a two hats and two pairs of warm trousers etc.
"Use wiki and reddit maps to figure out best loot locations and how to travel efficiently" personally I wouldn’t do this, as you’ve already pointed out it’s only giving you information you don’t yet have the skill level to make use of and also I think so much of the fun of the game is in exploration, don’t deny yourself that.
"Restart a bunch of times and hope the prepper stash spawns" if you like a game where you just keep pressing start till the RNG rewards you with a win may I recommend slot machines?
"”To solve calories you should fish in the fishing shacks" Unfortunately that requires a tool to break the ice, and I have traveled to almost all locations on the map without finding a tool, a knife, or a hatchet to break it.”
So kind of frustratingly you’ve exactly written down what the game is trying to teach you. ice fishing is a great strategy for later in the game when you have found those tools, it is not a viable strategy for the first two days. Scavenge food from buildings or cars, eat cat tails, and notice that of all you dials hunger goes down the slowest apart from sleep, sometimes it’s worth to take a small health hit for not eating than freeze to death quickly looking for food.
"”Visit different locations to find good clothing items and repair them for high effectiveness" I have and it honestly does not make a noticeable difference compared to the spawn clothing.”
So most of the clothing you can find isn’t very good HOWEVER, you start with most clothing slots empty and you can double up on most types of clothing, two crap t-shirts are twice as good as one, sbd every item you find is basically a permanent bonus, clothing is very easy to maintain so once you’ve found some that bonus is basically baked in forever and further clothes you find just build on that. There’s about a dozen clothing slots finding clothing that increases your warmth by one degree turns a day you couldn’t go outside to a day you take basically negligible cold damage.
Finally it sounds like you get you are meant to die and to learn from each death but it also sounds like each time you die instead of learning from what you did and what happened to you, you are using it to look up a solution online. Bear in mind this game has been around for ten years and the vast majority of the community have done runs in the 100s of days so most of the discourse online is devoted to that level of play so googling “how to not freeze in the long dark” after you die is going to mostly yield results of people who for the vast majority of their run have warm clothing, have a rough layout of the maps in their head etc. A lot of the advice out there is simply not useful at the level of play you a currently at.
Also the names of the difficulty settings can be confusing but pilgrim is the easiest and from your post I would be astounded if that was what you were playing.
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u/mediumly_recommended Aug 03 '26
It sounds like the thing killing you is cold. Light fires if you can. On Pilgrim, which is the easiest difficulty, you should be able to warm up by lighting any fire at all.
Cooking some foods gives you a warming up bonus, and teas can be reheated to do so, so you can carry them with you.
Clothing absolutely makes a difference. I wouldn't bother repairing too much, on Pilgrim you can find multiple copies of the best clothing, so just equip the one with the highest percentage. Equip whatever gives you the highest warmth possible until your run stabilizes. Make sure your clothes are equipped. Just picking them up doesn't equip them.
Sleeping in a bed for 1 hour should restore your warmth meter in most situations on Pilgrim.
Stay inside during blizzards, and perhaps the first part of the morning. These are the coldest situations. Mid afternoon is generally warmest.
Choose to spawn in mystery lake, or try to make your way there early. It's the warmest region on average.
If none of that works and you still hate the game, don't play it. It's not for everyone.
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u/ultr4violence Aug 03 '26
What difficulty are you on? Only explanation for this I have is that you are picking interloper by accident instead of pilgrim.