Hinterland Studio’s The Long Dark has proven to be one of the most punishing and grueling experiences in survival simulation in the last few years. Luckily, they gave players a few tools to make the night a bit easier to survive through.
The Long Dark is an agonizingly realistic survival title that, unlike others, doesn’t bring the paranormal or horror aspects into the genre that have become common. Instead, it’s just you versus the elements – quickly proving more terrifying than any island-dwelling mutants or insanity-fueled shadows.
With this new update, the developers are adding a few tools to make everything a teensy bit easier. Namely, they’re providing players with a few ways to improve navigation to make your travels through the wilderness a bit easier.
The first addition is simple survival markers. Now, players will have the ability to spray paint a marker onto an area they’ve visited to help them remember what sort of theme that area had, allowing them to know when – or if – they should return to the spot.
Find your way back to #TheLongDark to try the FEARLESS NAVIGATOR Update. Adding additional navigation tools to Survival Mode the Update offers players new ways to find their way around Great Bear Island. Details: https://t.co/IDjp6cnd8m
— The Long Dark (@IntoTheLongDark) May 24, 2020
The following markers have been added:
- Avoid
- Clothing
- Danger
- Searched
- Direction
- Fire Starting
- First Aid
- Food & Drink
- Hunting Area
- Materials
- Storage
- Tools
With so many different ways to differentiate an area that a player has visited, it’ll be significantly easier to know whether one should be returned to or avoided. Additionally, it’ll help leave a track so players can navigate everything a bit easier.
Spray paint is far from the only navigational tool being added, though. Hinterland also added in Rock Caches to serve as a landmark or container. Serving as a landmark, these caches can help you with navigation as much as any other marker. Used as a supply cache, though, they can quite literally save your life.
Players can also now reveal a large chunk of a region’s map by finding Polaroids. These Polaroids offer a huge view of a region and can help fill out a map to make navigation just a little bit easier, rather than stumbling about an unexplored region.
Charcoal Surveys have been improved as well, with players being able to fill out a larger survey by completing it at a higher altitude. Hinterland has also improved the map and journal tools to help keep track of surveyed locations.
Finally, the team also improved the Autowalk mechanic for players that might find it useful, specifically targeting the improvement towards players that might have hand or wrist issues. With opt-in telemetry, players can help the developers gather data to help improve future patches as well.
