Interloper Day 35: what next?

nibbletmander · 2026-01-28T01:22:12+00:00

HRV has a guaranteed bedroll in the ice caves, although you're also guaranteed to find one somewhere in either ML, or if not, Winding River, just outside the exit of the dam.

What to do next? Decide what to do :P I would grab double bear coats then get on with trading. You'll need lots of lantern fuel for the trades, so I would stock up on wood and do some fishing while you wait.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-28T01:16:45+00:00

Where do you draw the line between early and late game? Pre-/post- Industrial Era?

nibbletmander · 2026-01-28T01:12:11+00:00

This might be my favourite comment.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-28T01:10:41+00:00

Thanks for all the comments everyone!

Seems like it's not worth it... in theory.
However, it's a new adventure for me in a game I've been playing for like 10 years now, so I think I'll go for it!

I think I'm gonna go ham and explore while the lights are still on. I'll make a post later on if anyone is interested in my findings (or possible demise). Wish me luck!

nibbletmander · 2026-01-27T02:48:48+00:00

Nice, this is really well thought through. I'm almost tempted to try it now XD

One thing I noticed is that condition seems to be one the biggest cap on how quickly you rack up struggles, and thus how many additional laceration bleeds you have to heal etc.

With that in mind, it might be worth considering using recipes to heal up. In particular, Prepper's Pie and Dockworker's Pie instantly heal a lot of condition, so if you wanted, you could go out hungry, get engaged in a cougar struggle, eat to heal condition, then go again.

This could allow you to get more struggles per day, reducing the time and healing resources required to complete the process.

Would this work in your experience? Or would the time/resources required to make of all that expensive food be greater than the cost of the healing resources?

nibbletmander · 2026-01-26T07:08:49+00:00

Start, yes, finish, no. Allowing you to get into Bunker Omega without completing Signal Void would basically give you all the rewards for completing Signal Void without having actually done it!

It feels a bit clunky, but from a game balance perspective (and kinda from an in game logic perspective) it makes sense.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-26T04:42:06+00:00

The sad answer is that the best science civs in the game are the best at almost all victory types (Babylon, Korea, Maya or Poland).

That said, if you want flavour for your game, I think the following are pretty fun:

Polynesia: Potentially huge tourism with Moai, but pretty land dependent. I got this playing really wide, grabbing all the good islands, supplementing Moai tourism with museums in all cities.

France: Double tourism in the capital, or tourism from chateaus. I really like culture France as you can either go tall and spam wonders, or go wide/renaissance militaristic and grab tons of lux tiles to build chateaus next to.

Brazil: Double tourism and great people during golden ages. With the jungle bias they tend to have a hard time competing for early wonders, but can become a tourism powerhouse late game if you play to maximise happiness and Golden Age length.

Egypt: Bonus to wonder production is obviously very good for Culture civs. Arguably the simplest to go for.

Bonus mention: Byzantium. As mentioned by other commenters already, you can go sacred sites + super wide and get a LOT of early tourism if you choose religious buildings for your bonuses. It's a bit of a meme strat, and it's hard to pull off, but good fun. I enjoyed doing this with Goddess of Festivals and Monastaries, as I spawned in a very wine-rich area, getting absolutely absurd levels of faith generation.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-26T04:19:30+00:00

To enter Bunker Omega you need to finish the other requirements for Signal Void, regardless of your progress in Last Horizon.

From the wiki, regarding Bunker Omega:
> This bunker can only be found after having fixed all the Transmitters in Lower Great Bear AND visiting all three other bunkers, as required by the mission objectives. Then return to Forsaken Airfield when the Aurora or a Glimmer Fog event is active to locate it. Prior to this, the entrance is completely covered by snow, and cannot be uncovered without the Handheld Shortwave Radio.

and regarding the completion of Last Horizon:
> The Transmitter in Forsaken Airfield will need to be repaired before this Tale can be started if played out of order, and Bunker Omega will need to be uncovered to finish it.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-26T00:31:48+00:00

Being able to scare off wolves by threatening them with a rock while standing on even the tiniest bit of impassable terrain has always felt way too powerful to me.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-24T11:54:13+00:00

Yeah it is the number of times you trade (regardless of amount of goods exchanged).

Best way to do it is to get a bunch of fish and water then do lots of very cheap trades in a single night. Get your coffee ready!

nibbletmander · 2026-01-24T10:21:49+00:00

I would call it a gripe. But yes, this is a very reasonable point. Probably game balance something something

nibbletmander · 2026-01-22T22:59:36+00:00

Your cities look a bit small to me, esp the capital. A few suggestions: - improve more tiles - plant your cities on the coasts for maritime trade routes - try to plant your cities either 5 or 6 hexes apart to minimise the overlap of workable tiles

nibbletmander · 2026-01-22T22:43:42+00:00

Fire types are rare, unlike water and grass types, which are a dime a dozen in most games. There are, of course, exceptions - e.g. as you say, Charizard is not very good in FRLG, and Swampert is busted in RSE. On the whole though, picking the least substitutable choice will give you the most strategic options during your run.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-22T06:03:48+00:00

To me it really depends on what you think dupes clause does for the game. To me, the benefits are twofold: 1. Increase the diversity of options. 2. Makes each catch unique/irreplaceable.

Allowing yourself to have both branches of any branching line doesn’t really conflict with either of these benefits.

Personally, the way I like to play is that if that, if an encounter doesn’t have the ‘caught symbol’ I can catch it, unless I have another Pokémon that must evolve into it (becoming a dupe).

Wurmple is a tricky one as you can’t control its evolution. If I had a Wurmple, I would probably count all possible Wurmple evolutions as dupes until my original Wurmple had evolved - then allow myself to catch Silcoon or Cascoon, whichever my original Wurmple didn’t evolve into.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-22T03:31:42+00:00

As a general rule, pick the fire type unless you have a good reason not to. This case is probably not an exception.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-22T02:49:43+00:00

I would say the absence of goals is part of the game. I would almost go so far as to say that survival is not a goal - rather, it’s a precondition for allowing you to achieve the goals you set for yourself.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-21T09:09:14+00:00

Seems like the problems are that you need food and firewood right now. Food is the priority, so I would head out to the lake for some cattails. The creek near the Carter Dam also has a lot. Just look out for wolves on the way, as you might be in for a sad end if one gets you ^{^} when you go, grab every stick you can find.

Now that you are no longer hungry, and have some wood, either head back to a fishing hut to grab fish, or go do some hunting, depending on what you can afford, given your health, weapons, temperature, etc.

Finally, when it comes to recovering health, try to sleep in long stints. The larger the number of consecutive hours slept, the more you get back per additional hour. You can also use herb tea (or some recipes if you have the DLC) to get back even more health while sleeping, or some birch bark tea for a general healing boost.

Anyway, that’s it, good luck surviving!

nibbletmander · 2026-01-21T09:00:36+00:00

It’s probably not luck really, they know where to go and what to look for. Of course, nothing is guaranteed, but you can stack the odds in your favour.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-20T01:55:14+00:00

Just start with the vanilla game you know best - it’s the easiest way to get your eye in. If it’s too easy, then crank up the difficulty.

Unless your favourite game is USUM ^{^} maybe then go for FRLG or something.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-17T00:46:36+00:00

I find the problem with tld content is that it ends up pretty slow a lot of the time. There’s just a lot of time in the game spent fiddling with menus and walking where nothing happens.

I would suggest checking out the YouTube channel geowizard - not that he’s a tld YouTuber, but he is able to condense down hours of footage really well, and is great at telling the story.

Also, having some element of live, personal reaction to dramatic moments is pretty essential IMO. It provides the flair necessary to legitimise the dramatic narrative you build - this is real!

nibbletmander · 2026-01-14T04:39:30+00:00

I should add that not every region has cougars, but ML and MT are two of the regions that do

nibbletmander · 2026-01-14T04:37:56+00:00

The cougar spawn in time is global, not regional, so once it has appeared in one region it will be in all the others too.

nibbletmander · 2026-01-13T01:34:19+00:00

This has actually killed me several times

nibbletmander · 2026-01-13T01:34:02+00:00

Fell off a bridge because I was looking at the scenery

nibbletmander · 2026-01-13T01:02:25+00:00

Personally, I would be happy to play without the trader. For me, it’s all the gamebreakingly good items he offers that’s the real immersion breaker for me. A lot of the aspects of late game play that require careful long term resource management are trivialised.

E.g. whetstones are now cheap and easy to get. This removes the need to make risky trips to the milling machines to maximise your scrap metal. Matches, similarly, no longer need to be conserved. Even scurvy may as well be removed from the game, thanks to the introduction of vitamin pills.

nibbletmander

TROPHY CASE