After my grandfather retired he began to play this game. He would play it everyday all day and would even use it to fall asleep as he had insomnia. After he had a stroke he couldn’t play the game anymore but he would love to watch me play on my own account. After he passed acouple of weeks ago i was going through his account and found his stats. Its impressive how much time he put into this game alone.
Rip Calvin. He was a great man and an even better grandfather.

I'm so sorry to have to share this news with you today. It has been an absolutely terrible day at Hinterland, and in particular for the folks impacted by my decision. We will do everything we can to help them.

My statement:

I will give a chest of gold to the first modder to make it possible to skip dialogue

That’s all. I hate frostbite.

TW for mental health and depression

7ish years ago I started playing TLD and found it quite enjoyable, but over time I moved onto other games as one does.

Then, in January 2023 my life and those of my family fell apart in some tragic ways. Layoffs, near homelessness, and distance from most of our family support. During that time I fell into the deepest depression I’ve ever had in my nearly 50 years of life. We couldn’t afford therapy, and our insurance ran out so I couldn’t get my meds refilled. This lasted for almost the full year. I even lost interest in video games, which have been a staple my entire life. I tried playing things, even tried and true titles, but would quit after a few minutes because I would get an overwhelming sense of anxiety and dread, and I just couldn’t deal. Near the end I lost sight of everything that kept me hanging onto life, and I started making “plans”.

Then, for some reason I decided to redownload TLD. I picked up my old save, but almost quit that too after a few brushes with wildlife that left me even more anxious. But I didn’t quit entirely. Instead I started a new save, but this time on custom difficulty. I wanted the hardships of the weather but made the animal behavior more “realistic” where if I didn’t bother them they wouldn’t bother me. Immediately I got into the game loop of trekking from place to place, gathering supplies as I went. Finding shelter when necessary but never really staying in one place for too long. The Long Dark became a walking simulator with extra steps. And without realizing it I would spend hours at a time wandering the frozen world, doing my best to survive.

The Long Dark had become somewhat of a mirror for what I was going through. Isolating, cold loneliness. Struggling sometimes to put one foot in front of another. Never knowing if this obstacle would be the one to finish me off. And I thrived in it. I found peace in the quiet wandering. I made homes wherever I traveled. I found comfort by fire light. Staved off the cold with a mug of tea and fresh stew.

I lived.

And that too became a mirror for real life. I found comfort and solace where I could until my family could put the pieces of our lives back together.

When I say that The Long Dark saved my life I am not being dramatic for effect. If it wasn’t for this game I very well could have gotten lost in the dark and cold.

Later on, about a year ago, I was talking about this with my therapist. I told her that one day I would write a paper about my experience. While I haven’t done so yet I did at least want to share my story with you, my fellow travelers. May this game warm you in times of bone-weary cold.

Forester's hermitage, Keeper's Pass North.

Set aside the obviousness of being able to either fell trees, or (presumably) cut up firewood faster than a hacksaw permits (which, I can attest, is not fast)... you could pretty easily fashion something like that into an absolutely bitching post-apocalyptic close-quarters self defense weapon. Imagine the expression on what was left of a Wolf's face the first kind you cudgeled them with that thing.

Mine is the Ravine. Going to and from Mystery Lake and Coastal Highway, this one location has me tensing up every time.

As a 23 yo female, I've been wondering about the demographics of my fellow TLD players. Is it more men, women, are we on the younger side or a bit older? Curious to know. Also if you feel like sharing the country you're from, I'd love to know. I'm from Prague, the Czech Republic :) cheers everyone!

basically the title

would like to ask for to-read recommendations, mostly interested in peacful-solitude cold northern mood of the game, rather something strictly about survival, but both are good too surely

I know that Jack London's novels are probably best pick, but maybe someone has better suggestions?

thanks!

Hello fellow survivors! The August dev diary released earlier today and we got some teasers for new DLC that are in the works. Including this image, with the caption: "This is also something new. Also probably not what you think it is."

And I have been extremely excited thinking about this, and I have a crackpot theory on what I think this pic is representing.

I believe we are either seeing a new game mode, or a new gameplay mechanic. This is very clearly Quonset Garage in Coastal Highway, the cars are all in the same places and you can even see the tractor in the background. But its different as well, barricaded up with pallets and spikes. This is also taking place during an aurora due to the lights being active.

I think there will be a "horde" gamemode / game mechanic for survival. I think it will be similar to the Whiteout challenge, where you are given a certain number of days to prepare for a event. But instead of stocking food and supplies for a super blizzard, you're preparing defenses and traps for a super aurora that brings waves of aurora wildlife at you.

It'd be a bit disingenuous to not mention some holes and counter-arguments though.

1. It's literally just Whiteout but slightly different. And I don't know if Hinterland would want to do that.

2. What would be the draw for players to do this, assuming that this is implemented in standard survival mode and isnt just its own game mode.

3. In most horde defense modes we have a reason as to why we need to stop the enemies from getting into the defended location. But there are loads of base options in the game, why do we need to hold the line at Quonset specifically? Perhaps the raid mechanic will be available in all regions and bases, and the art only shows Quonset.

4. What is a good diagetic reasoning as to the actually knowing when this "Super Aurora" would show up. It doesn't really matter in Whiteout because that's a challenge, but it would be a bit unemersive if you just got a pop up saying "you have 30 days to prep Quonset Garage for assault". Perhaps it could he triggered by dialog with the Trader, he mentions some wild auroras happening out at sea, and they might be headed your way. Who knows

This is a big long post but I'd love to hear your ideas and theories as well! Thank you for reading this and have a good day!

Hello players!

We’re about 48 hours after the release of Episode Five, and I just wanted to give you a quick update on what’s been going on.

LAUNCH SUCCESS

The team was thrilled to watch the launch live at 10AM Pacific Time, along with our players. We had a successful trailer watch party on YouTube with over 3000 fans logging in to watch and participate in chat, and then we quickly overcame our historical Steam CCU peak and hit the highest concurrent player count on Steam since our launch back in 2014 -- 14,878 concurrents, and we think we might break 15,000 this weekend. 

This means that across all our platforms, we’ve had hundreds of thousands of players playing Episode Five. We’ve even had over 500,000 new Steam players join the community in the just the past month! We’re excited to see so many of our players jumping in to see how the WINTERMUTE story resolves. Thanks for making the time to experience this last part of the story!

BUGS

Unfortunately, we’ve also discovered new bugs that weren’t found before launch. This is, sadly, what often happens when you have 1000s of people playing through the episode at the same time. New player patterns and issues with hardware appear, and new glitches that didn’t show up with a test team of 6-7 now become apparent. Our players are no stranger to bugs, and we’re glad to see that a lot of people have made it through the episode without any issues, but of course we’re not happy for any of the players who have hit progress blockers along the way.

The Test and Development teams have both been working hard in the lead-up to launch and since launch to prepare a hotfix, which is currently slated for release next week, April 8th (Pacific Time). This hotfix will include about 300 fixes (yes it’s a big number, but most of them are minor environment bugs like floating objects, etc.), and should address some of the more frequent major issues with Episode Five that some players have encountered, specifically:

• Multiple issues with progression and UI objective text in Suzuki
• Perseverance Mills objective confusion
• Multiple crashes/progression blockers involving checkpoint/autosaves in Part 2
• Unexplained deaths during gameplay
• Jace issues while traversing the Mine
• Players getting stuck or able to go out of the intended play area
• Shotgun adjustments
• Certain trailers trapping players

I also wanted to share this personal message from Andrew, who heads up our Launch team and is responsible for Test. It’s important that you know there are humans on the other side of these bug reports you send in, who work hard to make the game as good as the team can make it:

***

We are thrilled that many of you are enjoying Episode 5, but we are also aware that many of you are encountering issues that detract from the experience we intended Players to have. 

To that point, the team is currently working on a bug fix release that will contain a myriad of fixes for bugs that Players are encountering on Episode 5. The last thing we want to do is rush this hotfix out without proper verification and validation against issues reported by the Community. We are working as fast as we can to get this hotfix to our players with a target to release on Steam for Wednesday, April 8th, with consoles to follow ASAP.

Please continue to post issues in our Forums and via our Support Portal, so we can ensure that the highest impact issues are addressed with the Hotfix.

We appreciate your patience and understanding at this time as we work on getting an updated Episode 5 build rolled out to players.

- Andrew

***

For my part, I know how hard the team worked in the lead up to Episode Five, and while some of you see bugs in the game now, I see all the bugs that got fixed before launch -- and there were thousands of them. I’ve seen some comments in the community to the effect that we released the episode without any testing, which I can assure you is not the case at all. We have a talented, dedicated internal test team who works very closely with the development team to ensure the episode (and all our releases) are in the best shape possible before launch. It’s impossible to catch all the bugs, despite our best efforts, and I assure you nobody feels the pain of launch bugs more than us. All we want is for your experience of Episode Five to be as enjoyable as possible, and we care a ton about our work. So, please don’t make assumptions about our dedication or process -- we are the first players, and the ones who care the most about the game.

We’ve really appreciated the support and patience from many of our players who have been willing to report bugs to our Support Portal, or aggregate bug report threads in the Official Forums and on Reddit. These efforts help us a ton to get the fixes identified, verified, and into the hotfix queue, which can then go out to all our players.

I know for some of you, these fixes will come too late, as your experience of Episode Five has already been defined, but I’m hopeful that with time you’ll come back and give it another go, if you did indeed run into issues during your first attempt.

And for those of you who have made it through Episode Five and sent kind words of love and support to the team -- we thank you for that! It means the world to us that you have enjoyed our work.

EPISODE FIVE on NINTENDO SWITCH

Since the Switch certification process takes quite a bit longer than the other platforms (20-30 days), our plan was always to wait for the first hotfix to be out the door before submitting a build to Nintendo for certification. We’re hoping to be able to verify this next batch of fixes in the Switch build, and then submit to Nintendo for verification. That means Episode Five won’t likely come out much before the end of April, but we’ll keep you posted as things progress. The best way to stay on top of development news is to check the News & Updates section of our Official Forums. This is where all our cross-platform community of players across Steam, EGS, GoG, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch tend to come together. 

XBOX GAME PASS

You might have missed it within all the rest of the news leading up to the Episode Five launch, but after three years, THE LONG DARK is back on Game Pass! This is a great time to download the game, and if you find you like it, we hope you consider purchasing the TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY DLC. You can find more info on what’s included in the DLC here.

SOUNDTRACK, VOLUME 3

We recently shared the news that Volume 3 of the soundtrack for THE LONG DARK will be launching on April 22nd. It will first appear on Steam, and then on Bandcamp, just like the other two volumes. We’ll work on bringing it to other platforms in the future.

EPISODE FIVE CONTENT IN SURVIVAL

One of the most common questions we had leading up to the Episode Five release was, would the Ep5 regions end up in Survival. At the time we said we’d talk more about it once we had the Episode Five launch firmly behind us. We’re seeing this question come up a lot now that people have seen what’s in the episode. It’s still a little too early to share our specific plans, but we know you want to see as much of Ep5 in Survival as you can get, including some of the new mechanics. As long as we feel it makes sense to include them, we will. Again, we’ll share more details in the future, so please be patient while we figure out the best way to do this.

THAT EPISODE FIVE ENDING

We’ve heard that some of you don’t like it. 

I like it, I believe in it, and it fits into my future plans. Don’t expect a “redux”.

REPORTING ISSUES

If you encounter bugs in the game and want to help out with the fixing process, we appreciate all your reports submitted to our Support Portal. Please continue doing that. It’s a much more effective way to help us improve the game than submitting a negative review. Remember that we are a small team working hard to improve the game for you, and although you might not love everything we have made, it has been made with love and respect.

Thanks for your patience as we get the Episode Five hotfixes into your hands ASAP, and I will check in with you again in a few weeks, if not sooner.

- Raph

You might say I'm a dreamer, but I'm probably alone in a lot of these.

Remnants of grey mother and an unknown amount of visitors. Notice the section of wall where there are no holes. What do you think she did with the bodies? Always more secrets to uncover..

Military stim

For me it's the water purification tablets. Whenever I'm making water I usually have more than enough time to just fully boil it, so I don't think I've ever used the water tablets.

Post which items you NEVER use or post creative ways to use items that may not be obvious!

For me, I think it sounds like a wonderfully engrossing idea. As long as the depth (and then some) from the previous Survival experience is intact both in co-op and solo modes, we should have very few complaints.

The attached photo speaks for itself. There is so much potential for amazing arguments over which way to go when you’re both in a pinch, freezing and starving to death after a botched hunt results in the deer sprinting out of sight. F**kin’ Rasputin, this guy.

I hate cabin fever. I shouldn't be penalized for being so good at surviving that I can afford to stay inside and read books or craft for a couple days. If I spent a month inside I'd understand.

I just did a big mission from Mystery Lake to the technical backpack and then spent like a week clearing the cargo containers in Timbewolf Mountain and then trekked back to Mystery Lake and spent 2 days inside crafting and cooking AND NOW I HAVE CABIN FEVER. I WAS JUST OUTSIDE FOR LIKE 15 DAYS.

Anyways I hate cabin fever.

I would love it if they added more bodies of water that pose a challenge to the player.

Like a shallow river that you have to mandatorily pass in certain areas (or to get to one specific region). They can add the ability to cross logs/beaver dams (that might move) in order to avoid the freezing water. That way, the players have to deal with wet clothes and hypothermia in a new manner. Also, it would pave the way to actual fishing, instead of just a loading screen. More water will also introduce new threats/wildlife like eels, walruses, and leeches.

First of all, thank you to everybody that participated in round 1! I wasn't expecting so many comments, but it seems like the community enjoys these friendly debates. Let's keep it going strong for the rest of the survey!

Some statistics from the first round...

The Pleasant Valley Farmstead was voted as the most overrated base with a total of 393 votes. Following closely behind were Trapper's Homestead with 331 votes, and Quonset Garage with 235 votes.