The Long Dark

EDIT: The following is based on experience gathered since the preview, so it might get weird somewhere, the game took a couple of turns since then :)

Welcome to the tedious!

If you're going for it I'd suggest playing custom, explorer or voyager sandbox, since rifle skill requires bullets, and you might just not find enough on interloper, and stalker takes about 200 h of gameplay to do it.

I'd suggest starting in mystery lake - plenty of resources and a nice-to-navigate map make it the best starting point in my opinion. Also, not a lot of wolves and alternative routes that let you avoid them Basing in the dam or trapper's homestead should give you easy access to fuel, workbench, game and an interior location fireplace (down the stairs at the dam) and a good base to make exploring trips. Just remember that this game will try to kill you - watch where and when you sleep, and always keep a flare and a stim handy. And don’t climb and sleep long periods unless you’re sure it’s safe. Seriously, I lost my best survivors due to underprepared climbing and sleeping off damage.

The skills (in the order you'll likely master them) are as follows:
- carcass harvesting
- cooking
- fishing
- archery
- fire starting
- rifle firearm
- mending

Few tips for that cheevo (would be grateful for any updates, I know the community is a rather lively one :) ):

1. Carcass harvesting
- for the frozen ones you’ll need a hunting knife or a hatchet at first, as you gain levels you can do most of the harvesting with your hands;
- keep in mind you can always make a fire next to a carcass to unfreeze it;
- I've noticed that the more you harvest with your hands the quicker the advance is, so it probably advances with time spent rather than quantity harvested, so use bare hands when possible;
- try to hunt around noon - it gives you the most time with fair temperature for harvesting animals;
- if you go for the rabbits and need the meat right away, leave the guts and pelt unharvested and harvest them indoors when the rabbit unfreezes. It's also a great way to pass time if you get your daily sleep rythm messed up;
- there’s a handy book for that, but it often goes to waste since it’s the easiest skill and often you max it out before you even find the manual.

2. Cooking
- you’ll need some food and a fire;
- cooking should come naturally as you run out of ready-to-eat food (which is usually pretty fast);
- it advances as you take ready food off the fire;
- try to pass time till ready, it's the safest way, timers tend to not be accurate (fires often last longer than they indicate, plus you can cook on embers), though you might want to sleep in the meantime too;
- try to make any piece of tea (rose hip or reishi) you come across, they're pretty useful and easy to do and advance the skill a bit;
- it takes a while, but will be your goal if you play stalker anyway, since lvl 5 allows you to eat food without the risk of getting parasites i.e. wolf and bear meat safely;
- some tips for the cooking down in the comments :) I would add one thing - pot belly stove is not your friend, just one cooking spot. Better light up a campfire, unless you've got a blizzard or something;
- there are books for this one, but it comes naturally, so no stress. Takes quite a while though.

3. Fire starting
- you’ll need fuel (any wood basically), tinder (birch bark, tinder plugs, newspapers, cat tail plants, no tinder required after level 3) and something to light it (matches, firestarter, lens, lit flare if you’re desperate);
- this one advances pretty slow, especially if you want to save matches, like I do :)
- magnifying lens is super helpful, it has infinite uses but only works in direct sunlight - so usually where the wind can kill your fire; there's sometimes one in the camp office, but most of the times you'll have to visit coastal highway or even further;
- don't be afraid to waste a bit of accelerant, as you gain levels it becomes obsolete and it helps out a lot at first;
- use sticks and if you've got enough food branches - it doesn't hurt your tools and there's plenty of them around; I made a habit of picking them up along the way;
- always try to use the best materials for starting chance - when you come across books, grab them, use cedar wood or sticks if you can't get those, if you have both kind of matches use wood ones first and so on. I'm only trying to save my firestarters for later if I get any, cause they lose more condition if you fail to start a fire than if you succeed;
- books help a lot, especially with the pretty hard first levels.

4. Fishing
- you’ll need a fishing hut, some wood for a fire perhaps, a good-old bedroll, sth to break the ice (prybar is great, but can be done with a knife, hammer or a hatchet) and a lot of fishing tackles (line made from guts + hooks made from metal scrap);
- it takes an awful lot of time, but is usually very safe if you’re dressed well;
- not much more to say about that one, pretty straightforward;
- my spot is at the fishing huts in coastal highway, the best spot in the game to make base in my opinion. The fishing hut is within running distance, you've got a bench nearby, rabbits, bear (up the creek), deer nearby, no wolves on the way but some in the area if you need them, and an occasional moose (this one's usually at quonset, so not that close though);
- books for this one are pretty effective and I think there’s one guaranteed in mystery lake (either in one of the huts or by the furthest cabin doorway).

5. Firearms
- you’ll need a rifle and a lot of bullets (and a rifle cleaning kit eventually);
- tricky one, keep an eye on any books you might find, there’s sometimes one at the dam, at the trappers cabin, camp office and at the cave by the lake overlook, though I think they’re mostly randomly distributed;
- don’t you dare to waste any bullets;! If you miss it’s better to reload a save. Sounds cheesy, but hey, it’s a grind and you know it :)
- if you could get a preppers cache with bullets - it would be great. It spawns on a ridge by the railway, opposite the camp office - go up the ridge and circle around the rocky top, if it's not there than you got a different cache;
- there seems to be an increase in bullet locations since the official launch, but it's pretty subjective so far; I got around 32 bullets in Mystery Lake (plus 15 at hunter's cache) and 27 in both Muskeg and Railroad on stalker, it's been worse usually, but it might just be RNG luck
- always check under the shelves or cupboards, single bullets are often hidden or hard to spot;
- I use the rifle mostly on bears and consider shooting wolves or rabbits a complete waste, but it’s not a general rule really; on custom playthrough (my stalker lady died :( ) I finished up the skill by shooting whatever with almost 90 bullets left;
- from voyager difficulty up your survivor will breathe (I think now it's every difficulty :>), sometimes quite heavily, swaying the sights; it doesn't seem to vary with the stamina or rested levels but it does vary a lot. Sometimes it's steady, sometimes you can barely aim. General rule - the longer you aim the worse it is, but you can always wait till the sights line up and land a hit. Crouching doesn't seem to help it (other than that you can get a bit closer to animals). It's best to lower the sights for a bit and aim again, since the most precise aiming moment seems to be the very first second.

6. Archery
- you’ll likely need a hatchet to get the saplings for the bow (maple + guts) and arrows (birch + arrowhead + feather);
- bow is hard to find really, mystery lake has only one possible spawn (at a hunter’s blind by the unnamed pond) I know of, but it saves your life if you manage to get the arrows;
- you can get arrowheads from broken arrows, so recycle them; there’s two guaranteed broken arrows at the dam (by the door to the lower dam in the big hall downstairs, just turn around when you get to the lower dam); you can often get broken arrows by the deer carasses so watch those birds :)
- feathers lay around dead guys or animals, shouldn’t be a problem;
- saplings are a finite resource, so waste as little as you can; you'll get way more than you need for the cheevo though; there are possible clusters of birch sapplings by the cabin along the western route to the big northwestern clearing, on the ridge by the trapper's cabin and past the cabins by the dam; maple is less regular (sometimes deadfall area) but then it's easier to spot;
- never let an animal run out with your arrow! It will die eventually, but is quite often impossible to find (or recover the arrow - that's possibly the buggiest piece of this game) and arrowheads are priceless;
- needless to say, avoid misses – they lower the arrows’ condition;
- your best bet (and a pretty natural thing) is to bait a wolf with a decoy (guts are best for this, just remember not to cure them) and position yourself facing his slow walk, then aim in the chest area - head and chest hits are usually fatal; you're going to be defending yourself from wolves anyway on anything but explorer all the time, so this shouldn't be a stray from the regular exploring;
- aiming is pretty straightforward, just remember that an arrow drops, so if you're far away you'll have to aim higher; the rest is just developing your own feel, no universal advice I know of;
- don’t hunt rabbits with a bow – arrows tend to mysteriously disappear after a hit, seen that a couple of times;
- if you miss a lot in your hunt just reload a save;
- if you don't waste too much you should be okay with materials, lvl 4 halves the condition loss;
- the skill goes up with making arrows as well;
- arrows won't do much damage to a deer till the final level, so shooting a deer repeatedly is actually a good way to practice, especially at the lake where they won't go too far and are fairly traceable;
- there are books!

7. Mending
- you’ll need something to sew (kit or a fishing tackle) a non-full condition piece of clothing and materials (cloth, leather, guts and pelts)
- cloth is easy to find at coastal highway (curtains!), in mystery lake you can get a lot by breaking down fancy chairs (a lot in the cabins by the lake); leather is pretty rare and it’s best to break down leather clothes for it and the guts and pelts run around and try to kill you;
- use kits first, tackles just take more time and there’s no reason to save kits for later – there’s nothing tackles can’t do that a kit can;
- if you’re having a hard time breaking clothes just let a wolf attack you, though it shouldn’t really be a problem, clothes lose condition over time, particularly the rabbit hat and mitts, so be prepared to see a lot of that awful rabbit animation :) (I couldn't really get over it at about 70th rabbit, thanks Hinterlands!);
- cloth is a finite (even if rather abundant) resource, so try to craft your own clothes and repair those with guts and hides as soon as you can when playing harder levels;
- this one is really, really grindy. I went to repair every spare item I found once and break it down (this way you get some progress yet save resources) and still had about 40 days of sewing. Not a cool one.

Hope this helps in any way and happy hunting!

Howdy,

Even after years and multiple updates Zlodziey‘s Guide still holds up and is still helpful even as I write this on August 20th, 2020. But now we have 2 new skills to grind out and that’s where I come in.

The 2 new skills are
•Revolver
&
•Gunsmithing

Revolver training is pretty much identical to Rifle training, so shoot things and read books to get better, bonus points if you have the Reading Feat unlocked and equipped (you get it after spending 250 hours reading, a bit of a grind to get. A fast way to farm books is to play on Pilgrim difficulty and spawn in the Mountain Town Milton, search all the buildings for books and you should find 4-6 books, read them, start a new game and repeat. If you’re lucky you’ll find the Advanced books that take 25 hour to read and you’ll only need 10, if you only found the low 4 hour books you’d need 62.5 books. They range from 4, 5, 10, and 25 hour long books. The feat gives you a 10% learning bonus from all books). If you don’t have it don’t worry because it’s not impossible to max out your skills without it.

Now Gunsmithing is a bit more complicated. . .
It was added to the game to make guns more practical for longterm games such as 500 day runs or longer where the player likely used up all of their ammo.
So with that shooting guns in the game has been altered a bit so now whenever you shoot a rifle you’ll immediately drop a Rifle Casing at your feet, and when you shot a Revolver you’ll drop a Revolver Casing whenever you reload.

MAKE SURE TO GRAB ALL AMMO CASINGS

Now this will probably be one of the last skills you max out because as of writing this there is only 1 Ammo Bench in the entire game and it’s located in the Workshop of Bleak Inlet, as well as a Milling Machine that (during an Aurora) you can use to fix ruined equipment like rifles or Hatchets using scrap metal.

Now it’s a pain to get to and navigate Bleak Inlet so go read my Faithful Cartographer guide for information about Bleak Inlet, a map of the area, and how to get into the Workshop. (Main thing is that you need to enter Bleak Inlet from the Ravine in order to get the door code for the Workshop, something you can’t do if you enter from Forlorn Muskeg).

To make ammo you’ll need a few things:

• Bullets - Made at the Ammo Bench by putting fuel in the Ammo Forge under the bench and using scrap lead (it takes 1 hour of forge fire to make 6 bullets, and that also gives you Gunsmithing experience). You can get Scrap Lead by taking out car batteries and harvesting them with a Hacksaw (don’t bother bringing scrap lead from other locations, the handful of cars on the highway by the Cannery Workshop should yield enough lead to make hundreds of bullets)

•Gunpowder - Can be found pretty easily, but it can only be made at the 1 Ammo Bench so whenever you head to Bleak Inlet make sure to bring all of your Stump Removal, Fertilizer with you. It also needs Charcoal but you can make that anywhere just by making long lasting fires. You don’t need much since 1 pound of gunpowder is enough to make over 100 ammo, and you only need to make like 30-40 Ammo (after grinding bullets from scrap lead) to get to Level 5.

•Rifle/Revolver Casings The most important/rarest ingredient so don’t forget your casings when you go hunting! (You’ll also lose casings at times where the game glitches based on what you’re standing on and the casings can go under the ground and become impossible to find/retrieve).

You can also harvest your existing ammo to get crafting ingredients, harvesting won’t give you any level experience but it will let you repeat the process. However keep in mind that while your Gunsmithing level is low you’re unlikely to harvest components and you’re more likely to destroy the casings and other parts. So try to get your level as high as you can (Like 2-3) by making lots of bullets in the Ammo Forge, crafting new Rifle/Revolver ammo at the bench, and reading all the books you can before harvesting your ammo.

Once you get going it’s actually very easy to level up Gunsmithing. I walked into the Workshop with about 50 scrap lead, 1 pound of gunpowder, 20 Rifle ammo and 12 Revolver ammo. After 2 in game days I went from level 1 to 5 and walked out with 9 Rifle ammo and 6 Revolver ammo, but now with level 5 I could keep making perfect ammo and using guns until day 3,000 when I finally run out of gunpowder.

Happy trails partner!