The diet of a lonely survivor stuck on Bear Island would hardly make a gourmet cook happy, but it's not all that monotonous. With some effort and risk, you can get juicy deer or moose steaks, and there are a dozen different fish species to catch. If you're faint at heart and prefer to be a vegan gatherer, cooked acorns and cat stalks will keep your stomach full. Still, some types of food which definitely should be there have been missing from the game until recently.
All screenshots are mine. Some pictures are cropped and edited and do not exactly represent what you find in the game. The list of new weapons was taken from the official game website.
While searching abandoned houses, we do find a variety of ready food, like pork'n'beans, canned tomato soups or the iconic Canadian ketchup crisps. What is missing? Plain, everyday things like cooking oil, flour or even salt. And then there's no trace of vegetables, even though we learn during a visit to the Pleasant Valley that the locals used to have their own veggie gardens before the Quiet Apocalypse arrived.
After the newest update gets downloaded and we launch the game, a new option appears in the inventory menu, showing us a list of recently added cooking recipes. Some of them are simple stews that can be made in an ordinary pot, others require a new tool, the skillet, to get them prepared. To nobody's surprise, each recipe requires a few ingredients, including new items added by the latest update. In my case, I was able to find them really quickly after loading my Survival run and searching a lonely mountain house near the Forsaken Airfield. With salt, flour and a few potatoes in my backpack, I was ready to try out the first of the new recipes: the good, old cooked potato.
Making stews requires a little more effort. Besides meat, two recently added ingredients are required: flour and a jar of broth. Moreover, it's necessary to collect enough fuel for about 90 minutes of cooking. And then, you have to make a large fire because chopping the meat happens when the stew is already brewing and if the fire is too weak, it will go out and you'll have to start again.
Ready broth jars can be found here and there, but sooner or later, you'll run out of them. If you like those delicious stews, you'll have to search for the new inhabitants of Bear Island.
Meet the ptarmigans
Birds aren't a new sight for Long Dark players, but until recently they've been simply untouchable. While they could be spotted flying above your head or circling over a frozen carcass, there was no way to kill them — and as every seasoned Long Darker knows too well, even that meagre, stringy crow meat could save the life of a lonely traveller. Fortunately for us, the new update finally makes it possible to add bird meat to our diet.
According to the almighty Wikipedia, the ptarmigan is a species native to a few regions of Canada and, compared with most other birds, its behaviour is a bit strange. The bird tends to forage on open ground and instead of flying away at the first sight of danger, it relies on an almost perfect camouflage, the snow-white feathers, and hopes that the potential threat won't spot them. For TLD players, this means that we're dealing with the less cowardly version of a rabbit. Moving carefully, it's possible to sneak close to a ptarmigan flock and hit one of the birds with a stone. One quick snap of your wrist and the creature lands in the backpack.
Ptarmigans are not stupid, though. When you miss a shot or stay near them for too long, they'll start running and fly away. Fortunately for hungry survivors, they are a territorial species and you'll find a flock near the same spot just one or two days later, giving you another chance to hunt one of them.
Meat extracted from a dead bird can be simply roasted on a fire and used in various recipes. Making broth requires a pot and some water, and then enough fuel for about an hour of cooking. In an emergency, it's even possible to eat it alone, but it would be much better to use it to make various stews. What's more, you can collect down from the dead bird. In this case, "down" means the inner layer of soft, fluffy feathers that keep the bird warm. Extracting them takes some time, but when you're done, they turn out to be quite useful. Ptarmigan down can be used to reinforce your bedroll, making it easier to survive while camping in open caves and other outdoor places. You can also use it to create Improvised Insulation, a makeshift piece of clothing. This may save your life on higher difficulty levels since getting really warm clothes is very hard.
Recipes of great power
Getting that sweet broth and making all kinds of stews may get old. How about something more ambitious? Let's make proper use of that shining new skillet we've found in just another abandoned house.
Just again, you'll need one proper tool and a few ingredients to get the job done. The second category in the cooking menu shows a couple of recipes, including lovely pancakes which will make your survivor's life a little more sweet. Other choices are various meat pies and bannock, a kind of flatbread. Whatever you choose, remember that flour and cooking oil are absolutely necessary to make use of your skillet. Ready pies and other dishes are really light when compared with cooked fish or meat, but they decay rather quickly, especially when you keep them indoors. Moreover, just like some stews, skillet recipes boost certain stats, including carrying weight and fatigue threshold. For that reason, they can be really helpful during long, difficult expeditions far from your favourite safehouse.
To unlock the last category of new skillet recipes, you'll need to do some serious legwork and keep your eyes open. They are scattered around various locations, usually in abandoned hopes, so you have to diligently search for small paper sheets. After finding and picking them up, you learn that the list of ingredients is quite large, and some recipes require rare food like canned corn. Still, for all your effort you get real power food with boosts multiple stats and feeds your survivor alter ego with lots of calories.
Staying vegan
If you're an ascetic type and think all those rich stews are degenerate luxury, here's some good news: a new plant species has been added to the game and yes, you can eat it. We're talking about burdocks growing here and there in small groups. Unlike cat tails, they require a tool to harvest them and it takes some time (you're basically digging up the roots). After that, you can prepare their roots and make them ready for eating, but another option is to prepare a burdock tea, a natural antibiotic beverage that helps you fight food poisoning and parasites.
Finally, some proper fishing
Until now, ice fishing was only possible in special huts located in just a few areas. Most of those huts were located far from the shore, making it exhausting and dangerous to get your catch — fish weighing up to 10 kilos — to a safe place (nothing attracts a hungry wolf like the smell of freshly caught salmon). With the latest update, though, fishing enthusiasts have a lot more freedom. A new option has appeared in the rest menu and when you click on it you see, just like when unfolding your sleeping bag, a small transparent disc. If you're on ice and the water beneath it is deep enough, the circle turns blue. Now all we have to do is select the tool to break up the ice and the fishing station is ready.
However, it turns out that the mechanics of fishing have become more complicated. Up to this time, a line with a hook was enough to get a catch, but now we have to work a little harder. In order to have a chance at catching a scaly specimen, we either need a piece of meat cut from another fish we have caught before (surprisingly, rabbit meat or corn are useless), or we need to make an elaborate lure at the workbench, using various different materials, such as scrap metal, bird feathers, and acorns.
Fishing outdoors is obviously risky since you're exposing yourself to sudden snowstorms or predator attacks. Fortunately, the process can now be automated by using a few sticks to create a clever contraption. Now you just need to mount it on a hole cut in the ice and then can confidently leave to do other things. Just return a few hours later to retrieve the fish caught in the trap. The only disadvantage of this solution is that you have to break through the ice twice, which damages your tools, especially the axe.
Mastering the new fishing mechanics and increasing your Survivor's skill level in fishing is rewarding... especially if you like challenges and trophies. Four new, rare fish species have been added to the game. Catching them takes some time, though, and so far I've just managed to find two of them, the Burbot and Rockfish.
Guns of Milton
Just as in one of the previous updates, there are now also some unique weapons to be found. You'll find their names on the official TLD website. The name of one of them, the Warden's Revolver, suggests that you have to visit the abandoned Blackrock prison in order to find it. Getting to the weapon is risky, as the way to the warden's office leads around the outer prison wall and you have to face several wolves and one really nasty bear. Once you've searched the ruins of the prison building, you might be a little disappointed as the new weapon doesn't have any special features, plus it lacks a bow tie, making aiming a little difficult. On the other hand, I have noticed that it is quicker to pull out than a normal revolver, so maybe it could serve as an emergency weapon in case of a sudden clash with a wolf.
Of all the listed weapons, the Sport Bow looks the most promising. Having a decent bow, more accurate and endurable than the hand-crafted survivor type, would make life on Bear Island a tad easier. Sadly, despite the long search (one of the reasons I'm publishing this review so late) I was unable to find it. But hey, now I have another reason to continue playing my xth Survival Mode playthrough.
Bigger, better, funnier
As a survival simulator, TLD attracts players with a combination of two particular factors: immersion and realism (or rather, a convincing illusion of realism). Most things in the game work according to common sense, or at least our common sense idea of survival in the freezing Canadian wilderness. Soaked clothes need to be dried, a strong wind will put out your campfire and eating mouldy meat will give you a stomach ache. Of course, we should remember that the Hinterland studio never intended to achieve maximum levels of realism — the opening screen showing after we launch the game openly informs us that their game does not teach real survival skills. A meticulously accurate depiction of the realities of survivalism would have made the game far too complicated and time-consuming so that only a handful of fans would have liked it. Besides, of course, every new item or mechanic meant to make the entire experience more immersive would cost the studio staff time and resources.
Therefore, the devs, may God bless them, had to take shortcuts and make compromises. Despite all of its realism, the Long Dark still requires the player to suspend their disbelief. At times it is difficult and some simplifications in realism are annoying, such as the inability to drop a backpack with heavy equipment. Fortunately, the third installment of new DLC fixes a few of these shortcomings. There is finally an option for normal cooking with quite a few recipes, and fishing is both more realistic and more rewarding.
This is only my personal opinion, of course, but there are still a few things to fix. It seems strange to me, for example, that we still extract animal offals, such as stomachs or livers, or use deer bones to make broth. There's nothing to complain about, though, because Tales from the Far Territory is moving in the right direction. With each update, the game becomes more interesting and varied — and there are still three more updates to come.
This will be a good winter for us Long Darkers.