The Long Dark

The Long Dark

31 ratings
25 Days in Langstrom Mine - The HARD Way
By MCharke
Summary
I am stubbornly determined to do this on my existing Voyager run, because I'm annoyed that it's almost impossible to do without starting a new run. I feel this violates the spirit of the game. On my run it's after the Cabin Fever grace period and I don't have Settled Mind so Cabin Fever is an issue - preventing sleep.

I calculated that I'll need 125 Birch Bark Teas, at least one Moose or Bear coat and 25 days food and water.

How it Works
After testing, Cabin Fever Reduction from recipes has no discernible effect at this time so I conclude that feature is not working yet and am ignoring my stack of 24 CFR pies. If that changes, this will be considerably easier to do.

Cabin Fever vs Birch Bark Tea
As a result of Cabin Fever you are going to lose 1% condition per hour from exhaustion, 24 per day for 20-25 days. Birch Bark tea is the solution, healing 5% and being an re-spawning resource. You will need 5 per day, so 125 teas. (If you spend an entire week outdoors before the run, you can delay Cabin Fever by perhaps 5-6 days, although I only managed 4. Expect problems like this.) You bring the teas as prepared birch bark, because it's light, so you'll need a fair amount of coal/wood for fires. There is a Fire Barrel near the bottom of the elevator shaft in Langstrom Mine. Collecting local wood in the Zone of Contamination should be enough.

Fun Note: Cabin Fever ends if you spend 24 hours without sleeping indoors, which you will do everyday. The instant that 24 hours is finished, you will get Cabin Fever again.

How to Pass Time
I've tried twice and failed. You can't pass time so the most efficient thing to do is break something down and abort before it's done, then repeat. The best item available was a crate but it cost a small fortune in calories to do so. This meant consuming about 4x normal calories per day. I realised I was going to run out of food and aborted that attempt.

Rather than eating such a huge amount of food, I considered Starvation. It also causes 1% condition loss, so I needed another 125 teas, but it took me weeks to get first batch of teas ready and I really didn't want to do it again. It was just too much. Fortunately another option appeared.

Someone pointed out that breaking down clothing doesn't cost extra calories. (After testing, this appears to be true.) The best clothing to harvest and abort is the bear or moose coat which takes 2 hours. You need to pass 500 hours so 1 hour items will require 500 harvests while the coat could reduce almost to only 250 Harvests. (Alternatively you could wait 125 real hours at the normal x4 speed of the game. Ha.)

Other Food
Coffee, Tea and certain pies also restore condition and they are certainly something you, could bring with you but since you are going to be repeating the same actions hundreds of times, it could lead to mistakes, harvesting something you need, or eating something early.

I need a few more teas and that coat, probably several, cure some more meat and then I'll head back to try again. This isn't an exciting or fun challenge because you are repeating the same thing over and over in the dark. This is just for the stubborn.
   
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1 Comments
MCharke  [author] 25 Oct @ 5:16pm 
Addendum; I succeeded. I did 25 days without sleeping. During the aurora or glimmer fog, I could craft to pass time so one modification was bringing down a bunch of wolf pelts and making wolf hats which, when done with the worst tool, takes a very long time. I made about 12 of them. I filmed the event but it was done almost entirely in the dark. I started with a big coffee and tea brew but mostly it was being REALLY careful not to destroy my one coat. I burned through all my tea and drank a lot of coffee for condition recovery. Most of the event was in the dark once the one big cook was over. The mine is pretty warm thankfully. It took a long time and I didn't dare shut down the game during that time so I did it in one sitting.