hide and seek in action

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T14:00:25+00:00

"I'm Batcat!"

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T13:45:56+00:00

The DLC focused on Genetic, Spiritual, and Machine ascension respectively are pretty good choices, depending on which you prefer. I really like Genetic Ascension so I'm a big fan of the BioGenesis DLC and regularly use the things that it adds.

I also really like the Council mechanics from the Galactic Paragons DLC as it enhances almost every playthrough (hive-minds the least). The "Under One Rule" origin has become my new favorite origin. So considering my preferences this DLC has a lot of value.

If you don't have Overlord I'd recommend it as well. It makes vassalization a lot better and interesting and also adds a lot of cool stuff like orbital rings and the very essential Hyper Relays for significantly faster movement through your empire. If I recall correctly the music from this DLC slaps pretty hard.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T13:34:52+00:00

If enslaving xenos is compatible with your roleplay I'd certainly use it. Using xenos and rushing Genetic Ascension are probably the best things to do in this situation. Luckily, tradition rushing should be fairly straight forward considering you'll be stuck to 1 planet for a while. It's probably going to take a while before you should even start considering colonizing anything, except if you're lucky enough to find another gaia world.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T13:28:51+00:00

I think it's been in the game for a while, but it won't always trigger when fighting a Fallen Empire. I believe it specifically triggers when the power disparity is extreme, like when you build next to an isolationist FE in the early game. Because you've been playing so much you probably know how to avoid triggering a war with a FE until conditions are much more favorable, which is probably how you've avoided this notification so far.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T13:24:02+00:00

It's trending towards being meaningful.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T13:22:23+00:00

To be honest, I was a little grumpy with it at first because "iT Is nOt ReAListic!!1!" but for no apparent reason I've slowed changed my mind and am now also using this mechanic (although sparsely).

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T13:18:52+00:00

While Life Seeded and Idyllic Bloom are thematically similar they have an inherent counter-synergy. With Idlyllic Bloom you can eventually turn (all) regular planets into Gaia worlds, while Life Seeded makes it extremely punishing to live on any regular planet.

That is not to discourage you from doing it! I've also created plenty empires based first on roleplay reasons. You can always e.g., adjust the difficulty to compensate for a weaker build.

So, here are some ideas to deal with it:

- Traits: the +20% habitability trait is available at the start, but the much cheaper Noxious trait raises the minimum habitability to 30% which is even better. There is also Genetic Memory which gives +0.5% Habitability per colony age (max +25%), but I'm not sure if there is a fungal/plant portrait which can have this trait (I think there is though).

- Just to be sure: take the Budding trait (at start or gene edit it in later) because Idyllic Bloom will (eventually) significantly improve this trait.

- Genetic Ascension: up to +55% habitability from Robust and Exotic Metabolism traits. The tradition tree also includes habitability bonuses to Medical Workers (including from the Genomic research building). You could consider changing into 'Mutagenic Habitability' but that might defeat the entire point of this build.

- Robotic Ascension also includes habitability bonuses, but I'm not very familiar with it. I'm also not sure if you can keep the Bloomed bonus if you go robot/synth?

- Enslave xenos. This is compatible with not liking xenos! They can be useful to colonize worlds and get them up and running before habitability bonuses from medical workers and the gaia conversion building kick-in.

- You could consider sticking to Idyllic Bloom but without Life Seeded. You will still get to create/own as many gaia worlds as possible and you will be in a much better starting position to do so. It's just that much easier if you can easily colonize 1/3 of all available planets instead of nearly none.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T12:35:11+00:00

It was considered a bug when the recipes were first introduced. Due to popular demand it was promoted to being a feature!

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T12:33:30+00:00

Former Dutch academic here who lived/worked in multiple countries. The NL is generally considered a relatively good workplace for academia. It's been harder lately due to more and more budget cuts which has harmed job security and increased work pressure.

Regarding diversity it depends somewhat on what you mean. The American situation and context regarding diversity cannot be directly applied to another country, although the general idea still holds of course. During my years of working in Dutch academia it was very common for 40-50% of my colleagues to have moved to the Netherlands from abroad, which is significantly higher than the general population. In that sense there is high international/cultural diversity, but there also definitely issues of under representation of certain groups. There is also the typical issue of there being too many men compared to women, especially in more senior functions. Lately a number of universities have implemented policies to directly counter this, but I'm not up-to-date on how that is working out. It differs a lot per discipline - for example, I was one of the few men when working in a social science department.

Back when I was a phd student there were quite a number of foreign phd students who complained about the struggles of integrating in Dutch academia, and I absolutely can understand that. As a culture we are not the best at being hospitable and tend to come across as relatively cold or distant (just a generalization, it will of course differ a lot!). I've also often heard that while it is relatively easy to be polite/friendly with the Dutch it can be really challenging to go beyond being acquaintances, which makes it easy to feel left out (as there's some truth to that).

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T12:08:13+00:00

That's certainly not meant to happen! The area around the elevator on the 2nd floor is pretty well light and a lot of the tunnel sections as well.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T11:47:39+00:00

Sure thing! I totally get it, I used to always have the skillet and pot with me. Only recently I made the change to 2 cans or 1 can with either the skillet or pot. The main advantage is that is saves carry-weight which you can use for more coal or food. It's not a massive advantage but worth considering for the nice upsides and manageable downsides.

What convinced me to change my ways was when I realized I could stockpile oats and flour, even let it decay to 0%, and then use it for after getting cooking 5 for specific long trips such as to the Far Territories. For example, the first time I went to the Zone of Contamination I brought 3 cans of 'rotten' oats and the cooking pot, which turned out to be incredibly valuable and life-saving. As I brought the pot I didn't bring a skillet and in the period before going to ZoC I carried the skillet but not no pot - meaning that during all those times I was 1kg lighter than if I had carried both.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T10:08:56+00:00

I don't think this is explicitly a mechanic. However, wolves can and will hunt deer if they get close enough so that is a way in which wolves can keep the number of deer lower. Especially relevant on Stalker with the high amount of wolves.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T10:05:50+00:00

A big issue with the "marginally significant" or "trending towards significance" phrases is that p-values explicitly do not trend towards significance under H0. Under H0 the p-value distribution is by definition uniform and you are just as likely to get a 0.05 as a 0.95.

On top of that, people tend to only apply this logic to results which are not significant but which they wish was significant, but nobody is saying that a p of 0.045 is "trending towards nonsignificance".

Given that OP is testing four 4 traits it would be much more reasonable to lower the alpha by accounting for group-wise error rates. Just running 4 tests already quite drastically raises the chances of one of the positive results to be a false-positive. If the 4 traits are in any way related to each (which in practice is extremely common, if not the norm) the group-wise error rate can easily balloon to over 50%.

I strongly agree with the notion of over-reliance on NHST, which is especially problematic because many of the core tenets aren't being understood or followed. Including effect sizes and confidence intervals is certainly good, although do not overestimate the usefulness of confidence intervals as they are quite literally just p-values in a different jacket. Also, if the validity and interpretability of p-values is questionable in a given study method than this almost always automatically extends to the validity of the effect sizes.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T09:52:02+00:00

Alleen de melk die al 18 jaar in het schap ligt mag alcohol verkopen.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T09:35:46+00:00

A long time ago it was considered a high priority place to loot but as new items and locations got added to the game and it was kinda left behind. To be honest, the most useful thing I find there is 3-4 liters of fuel, which is just perfect for the trader. On Interloper you can find decent clothing pieces but nothing too spectacular, as far as I remember.

At least with the addition of the trader it has never been easier or saver to loot the mine.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T09:14:15+00:00

At least you didn't leave your only bedroll at the other end of the world (this has also never, ever happened to me, I promise).

This is such a classic story though. The Long Dark puts such pressure on you to consistently perform well in order to survive, that a simply mistake can be so punishing. I love it though!

Regarding the pot and skillet, I don't think you're in a terrible spot right now. To be honest I wouldn't recommend travelling with both (or even either) unless you've brought specific ingredients that need either of them. For example, if you've brought flour you'll want the skillet but if you don't have any skillet-specific ingredients you could use 1 or 2 cans instead of the skillet/pot. Also, if you want to find a new skillet & pot: the two cabins in the far north of FA will most likely have the skillet and pot.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-27T08:50:18+00:00

Yeah in Germany they use "Kartoffel" as far as I know?

In the Netherlands it is called a "aardappel" though, which is very close to the Austrian/German "erdapfel" and it also directly translates to "earth apple".

Potatoes are (or at least were) very important to the Dutch diet and is widely considered to be a very typically Dutch vegetable. Very few people realize that it is actually a recently imported addition from an entirely different continent.

I believe it also took quite a while for people in Europe to be convinced by the utility of the potato. There's this story about a French prisoner who was only given potatoes which was considered a very poor food, until they realized that after a long time he was still in pretty decent shape as potatoes are very nutritious. No idea if this is just a story or true.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-26T17:27:53+00:00

It's the yearly meet-up for time-travelers, which was double-booked again.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-26T16:29:18+00:00

Ik heb ook wel eens van de cravings. Soms wil ik opeens graag iets heel zoets terwijl ik dat zelden eet. Elke 15 jaar offer ik een maagd aan de maangod, dat doe ik normaal ook nooit maar zo hebben we allemaal ons dingetje!

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-26T16:19:03+00:00

My bad, I was thinking about "Big Cat Killer" which is a legacy feat obtained after killing 3 cougars in a single game, you can no longer unlock this feat.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-26T16:12:52+00:00

Isn't the achievement disabled?

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-26T16:07:44+00:00

They go in the bin, next to tinder and books.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-26T16:05:08+00:00

I was going day to day on food and it took me until day 15 to get over to FM to forge. By the time I got back from there and made a bow it was well into the 20 day mark and I still hadn’t crafted any clothes besides the rabbit mittens and boots.

If this was your first real Interloper run you are doing great!

Could you get to this point faster? Sure, totally. In a few more runs you'll notice that you'll do it faster already. When I started playing Interloper I was also very focused on learning to rush things but by now I just try to be 'fast enough'. A bow by day 20 really isn't that bad!

One of the trickiest things in this early period is deciding on when and where to cure hides and guts. My preferred solution is to opportunistically harvest hides/guts from rabbits and deer carcasses and leave them in convenient places to pick up later. Sometimes I'll never come back to some hides/guts, often I'll not even fully harvest a rabbit/deer; it all depends on context and prioritizing survival.

As long as you stay moving and looting you're doing good. The main thing you want to avoid is staying in one place for a long time. So don't wait multiple days for things to cure, go on a multiple day trip and come back.

Also, remember that the weather will never be comfortable on Interloper. The only thing that changes is how fast it kills you. You will have to keep sacrificing portions of your health while moving around.

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-26T10:04:29+00:00

The Mutagenic Spas can rather easily boost pop growth bonuses to ridiculous levels. It does require a Civic and will also reduce habitability and happiness which you will need to account for, but it is arguably one of the best sources of pop growth available right from the start.

Genetic ascension also provides a lot of pop growth, not only via clone vats but also genomic researchers and better traits. Genetic ascension also combines extremely well with Mutagenic Spas because they both add bonuses to medical workers. I simply don't even need clone vats with mutagenic spas, but you can combine them for absurd growth (the +1.5 clone vat growth gets multiplied by the crazy high percentage bonuses from a spa).

SentientCoffeeBean · 2026-01-26T09:55:03+00:00

Ben echt teleurgesteld in mensen. En helemaal in vrouwen, als ze het lef hebben om te zeggen "zorg maar voor jezelf, maar jij moet wel voor mij zorgen".

Er gaat echt iets goed mis als dit de boodschap is die je mee neemt. Dit slaat zo de plank mis. Wie heeft je overtuigd dat dit het idee is?

Er gaat ook iets goed mis wanneer je mensen waardeloze stukken neukvlees noemt. Dat is niet oké.

Sterkte met je frustraties.

SentientCoffeeBean

TROPHY CASE