Trophy thoughts ?

[Gloom12356776543]

What do you guys think about the trophies ? kinda disappointed with only one trophy icon for all ? Doesn't looks so bad apart that 500 days of Survival ? ?, but it sure will be hell of a grind, I suppose ? and hope the challenges are all doable ? 

 

[medenko1975]

Game any good?

[DrEvilGuapo]

I have had this game on my radar, looking forward to previewing the trophy list. The game has been reviewed very well on Steam, where it has been around for some time with the developers rolling out significant improvements over time. 

 

This trophy list made me sigh. I thought 7 Days to Die was a grind-a-thon. It's <1% plat on PSNP would attest to that. This seems worse. 

 

FYI, my understanding is that when you die in survival mode, it's over. It deletes the save file. 

 

Here are the Steam achievements, which do not include the Story Mode trophies you see at the bottom of the PSN list. It gives an idea regarding difficulty for each. 

 

https://steamcommunity.com/stats/305620/achievements/

Edited July 30, 2017 by DrEvilGuapo

[The__Mango__Man]

I've played the game extensively on Steam, and I preordered it for PSN. It's an awesome gem with a unique art style that fits the setting. If you enjoy any sort of survival games, this one is among the best. Trophy wise, many of the "collect this, spend 3 nights outside, etc." are easy to earn, though the ones that ask you to survive for long stretches of time are not, unless you are really patient. If you set up good systems for fishing, setting traps, maintaining fires, etc. with a good shelter, than it's easier than it seems. The problem is of course the grind. I'm excited to see how the story plays out, and I'm sure those trophies come naturally.

[Umych]

How come trophy icons are all messed up for this game? On PSN every trophy has a unique pic, art to it, on PSNP it's one image for all of them. Just curious...

 

Hopefully, Mango has some thoughts on it, as he usually does ?

[gtasthehunter]

Does the difficulty affect any trophies?

[tjoe1bkhjtqxm]

This survival game reminds me the style of Metal Gear Survive lol

[Strike-Runner]

I bought this game in GameStop I thought it would be a survival horror but apparently it’s an actual survival game which involves hunting, and looting for actual survival. My thoughts for this I regret buying this. I know it’s time consuming but my questions are how long is it to plat, how big is the map, and if difficulty matters in this game. Also is this worth playing all the way till the end. 

[Whirled03]

Edit #2 - They did fix the bug preventing players from correctly entering the Lake Cave in Hushed River Valley, which means as far as I know, Faithful Cartographer can be achieved normally (i.e. without the "method" I posted in another topic). Since they fixed it, I decided to remove any mention of it from this post.

 

I was certainly not expecting a patch for it to roll out that quickly, so props to Hinterland Studio for quickly fixing it.

[End of Edit]

 

I've been playing it pretty solidly for the past couple of weeks now. The trophies are a grind for sure, but the game itself is overall not horribly difficult if you understand item and time management.

 

The most difficult trophy in the game is arguably Faithful Cartographer, which forces you to "map/survey" every major exterior location. From what I understand, the game (I have a digital version, unsure how physical copies work) has free content patches, and they've added in new areas. Unfortunately, they have also added the new locations to the requirements for the trophy, which means it might be more difficult if they continue to add more free content.

 

Fortunately, there are a couple of resources to help with this. First, one of the developers made a post on Steam that listed all the locations that are required. The list can be found here:

 

https://steamcommunity.com/app/305620/discussions/0/2549465882922508359/

 

Some awesome soul named Whiteberry has also made fairly good maps of each area (the older areas at least, and they're like 90% accurate), and a person named Stray Wolf did the new ones.

 

The majority of the maps are found in this link, but just do a search to find the others (I believe they're all listed on the Long Dark wiki):

 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?l=norwegian&id=530202531

 

Overall Trophy Thoughts:

 

The most "difficult" trophies, including Faithful Cartographer, are to be done in Survival Mode. This is also where you're expected to survive for 500 days. In terms of gameplay, basically the game puts you in a location somewhere, loads a bunch of randomized items into each map, and tells you to go last as long as you can.

 

The good thing about this is that yes, you can earn the 500 days/Faithful Cartographer playing on the easiest difficulty setting. This means that you'll get the maximum amount of supplies given to you; your Thirst/Hunger/Temperature/Fatigue decreases at the lowest rate; and wildlife will never proactively attack you, but will only attack you under certain specific conditions (such as shooting a bear, specifically with a bow, if you're in its line-of-sight). This makes it fairly manageable as long as you're cautious with what you're doing.

 

You can't simply go around without trying to plan ahead, so there is some need to be organized and try to plan for future problems (like making a "stash house" in each zone has helped a lot for me).

 

There are auto-saves, and it's possible to manipulate them; for example, reloading when something doesn't go your way, and you can even back-up your save before making a journey into an unknown area.

 

The "Challenges" can be difficult, but they do seem to be somewhat RNG based. The very first, Hopeless Rescue, is significantly easier if the game decides to give you a bunch of Coffee at the beginning (you still have to plan things out, but the Coffee does make a gigantic difference), but it's completely random if it decides to give you any at all.

 

The rest of the trophies are just more groan-inducing than anything else; Living Off the Land requires 25 straight days of only consuming "natural" food, but it may void if you decide to consume tea (which is ironically, harvested naturally). Obviously if you just forget about it, oops, have to start the 25 day cycle all over, which sucks.

 

500 days is just time consuming, and not particularly difficult if you can organize things well. I'm unsure if Faithful Cartographer, needs to be done in a single game (as other trophies specifically indicate a single game), but it may be the case each mapped location gets saved to your Profile (I haven't tested this much, but I did for my last location, and seemed to be the case).

 

It's obviously optimal to pair the 500 days and Faithful Cartographer trophies together regardless (as well as probably Living Off the Land, and the "all skills at level 5" one), due to how you will be forced to move to other areas to find various supplies, and to find good places to stay for lengthy amounts of time. Not to mention you'll be severely bored waiting in the same area for 500 days straight.

 

For the Story Mode trophies, the only real issue with them is how the developers have overhauled a lot of Story Mode (and have done a lot of bug fixes), so there's a lot of misinformation, or lack of current up-to-date information, floating around on the internet. The "Graduation Day" trophy for example, used to be tied to a NPC, but now the side quests for it are exclusively tied to collectibles found in each episode. Long story short, as of 1/19/19, I followed this guide for Graduation Day:

 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1099693320

 

The author also gives Hidden Cache locations (for the Cache Mastery trophy); Safety Deposit Box Key locations (for Too Big To Fail); and Forest Talker Cache locations (for Sounds Like Some Kind of Indie Band). Although I can't vouch for the accuracy of the guide for those, as I finished those aforementioned trophies with a mixture of my own exploring and help from Youtube.

 

Gameplay Thoughts:

 

If it wasn't for the crashes, I would sincerely like this game. Granted, some things don't really make much sense (like Fatigue/Thirst deteriorate all the time), but the game really does feel like a real survival game to me. It's certainly not an "exciting" game per se, as you're really not being tested in combat (although it does happen), but it's more of an exploration game.

 

There seems to be a lot of very subtle system design - Wind can affect movement speed; time of day affects the temperature; how much you weigh will affect your Hunger/Fatigue depletion, among many others. Interestingly, I do find a lot of it is mostly pretty well balanced, and they provide you with items that do multiple things (like how a soda helps your Thirst and Hunger). It's this managing of this subtle system that I think the designers did really well at.

 

I also think it has a great atmosphere. Seeing the aurora lights come in the middle of the night is a nice sight (and you can use as light to craft or read), and it also turns on any nearby electrical equipment, which is kind of interesting. The sound design is also on point - During a blizzard, and if you're indoors, you can hear the window panels shake, and it sounds decently realistic.

 

What I don't like (although I'll admit, most of my time has been spent on the easiest setting) is the Hunting aspect. It seems to be a bit of a mess, and a lot of which isn't fully explained. If you try to shoot a Deer with a Rifle, chances are you won't kill it with 1 shot, and it gallops in a gigantic circle. This is all well and fine, until you realize you have a Stamina bar (while the deer can sprint infinitely), which means you'll inevitably run out trying to catch up to it, only to have it bolt past you over a hill. As a result, once you lose line-of-sight of it, it's very difficult to find it again, which means you potentially wasted a bullet for nothing.

 

Bows are irritating as well - It relies on "bleeding out" the target, rather than direct damage. The game doesn't really tell you this though, which is kind of stupid. It's tough to aim; it's difficult to judge the arc pathway; arrows can break; you can't crouch and shoot (which makes it very hard to sneak up on anything); crafting an arrow requires an arrowhead, and arrowheads can only be made at Forges (which is a headache in itself, as there are only a few in mostly remote areas).

 

Anyway, that's probably more information than anyone wanted to know. Ask for information, and ye shall receive.

Edited January 19, 2019 by Whirled03
Info on bug, some mistakes corrected