Random Findings from being the worst porter ever.

[Yellow Herb]

So i've been playing on the playstation but thought it would be fun to share my findings here anyway, on my third play through i have decided to be the worst porter ever, my first play through i was a goodie goodie, getting everything done right, never hurting anyone and pleasing everyone, full 110% good boy, second time i attempted to speed run, do whatever got me to the finish asap.

but this time i want to try upset everyone and do everything wrong and give into every curious and intrusive thought possible and i have found a few things i feel very few people might know and that i could not find any decent answers for online.

First was corpses, what happens if you just leave corpses laying around?
There are a couple answers; first if you just leave them laying randomly throughout the world they will in-game after several days (not 48 hours like they canonically say as a few bodies took in-game 3-6 days) will turn the nearest pre-set space into a BT timefall zone, where in NPC porters are no longer safe to work (and thus never even go near) and if you want you can get caught by a BT there, summon the boss and kill it to clear the area of BT and timefall,
With this it does not seem to matter how many bodies you leave in a space there will only ever be the one boss that when killed will clear the area and make it safe again.
The second answer was leaving bodies around buildings, sadly this one is not very interesting, once you get so far from the building the body will despawn and you will get scolded by Diehard telling you the Corpse Disposal Team needed to clean up your mess and you will lose 200 likes per corpse (CDT needed to do their job, big oof).
Either way leaving bodies around never results in a voidout unless you yourself get caught and die to the BTs made from the body.


Next was BB, what happens if you're just a monster to BB?
Honestly its really hard to neglect BB, it seems the lower BB's connection to you is the more BB randomly enjoys pointless things to raise said connection, i tried to frequently shake BB but after a while Sam just stops letting you interact with BB and BB will start laughing and getting happy from you just walking, jumping, climbing, driving, i even had BB give me 3 likes and raise our connection because i held onto a ladder for a moment to check my phone, so it seems as hard as i tried, it is impossible to get zero connection with BB, as the lower it gets the more easily amused BB becomes to raise it back up.

Following on that, keeping BB in a state of shock (forgot the name of the actual condition that is described as the body killing itself) for too long, sadly this one is an anti-climax, nothing, nothing happens, ever, you dont lose connection to BB, you dont get scolded by anyone, nothing, BB just whimpers and cries in the background, i left BB in this state for several in-game days while i played for hours and nothing ever came from it, you cant raise your connection to BB and cant see BT's that is the only draw back, but you also cant lower your connection while BB is in this state so it could not be used to reach zero connection either.


But that does lead me into my next experiment, pushing Sam to the breaking point,
Coupled with keeping BB in shock for hours on end while i worked without rest and without shoes, i found that the lowering your fatigue does not actually make you move more sluggish as the game says, it just lowers how much stamina you have before you fall over, but even at 100% fatigue you're still always given the full last 25% of the bar, which is far i guess, but being at 100% fatigue has no other effects outside of making Sam gasp and groan more and have a different idle animation of almost falling over, he will also drop to his knees to catch his breath if left idle on a flat surface for a moment, which if left in does seem to slowly restore the last 25% of your fatigue which is pointless anyway since fatigue only effects your stamina and you always get that last 25% of stamina anyway,
Oddly enough resting does not recover the last 25% of fatigue but leaving him on his hands and knees does recover it.

Now for the shoes, the shoes have a big impact on your movement unlike fatigue, you can not go into a full sprint without shoes on, even with a power or speed skeleton on, that is unless you enter adrenaline where in you can break into a full sprint once again, but having bleeding feet is a little more interesting, it is somewhat implied by how urgently NPCs tell you to get new shoes that you can bleed out from cutting your feet and continuing to walk on them, you in fact can not bleed out, you will lose 1 blood for every other step you take and the blood loss just completely stops once you reach 300 or lower blood.

All this combined has me believe Sam is a god, i had him run 5 in-game days of across the world hauling massive loads at 100% fatigue with no shoes and bleeding feet, walking him up and down the snowy mountains like this several times and threw him face first into rocks and rushing rapids, none of it even came close to killing him.
But you know what did kill him, sleeping in the snow, honestly a nice touch, if you set down to rest and choose or let Sam fall asleep while you're in the snowy mountains he will die in his sleep, there is zero consequences to this as you cant sleep while there are BTs even nearby but I did try test if anything unique happens if you die over and over in the same spot, after leaving Sam to freeze to death 15 times, i can tell you nothing unique happens, it just seems there is a 1 in 5 chance the BB inside you while reviving spins around to show its ass to the camera before it gives you the thumbs up.

Last is the rare chances to carry NPC's, besides the obvious, hurting them, leaving them behind, dropping them in water or letting a BT touch them resulting in an instant game over and mission restart, i wanted to see what happens if you leave them with the MULEs, sadly, nothing, nothing at all, the MULES do not even react to them, just walking right past them as if they're not even there.

That is all the most interesting stuff i could discover during my dumbass run that i could not find solid answers for online, i hope my stupid curiosity helps save some others from wasting hours of their time just to see what happens, just to find out little if nothing happens like i did. gg

[Nice]

Thanks! It was very amusing (and disapointing) to read your account. Just started playing it on gamepass, and i imagined things would have harsher consequences or interesting tidbits. You saved me the trouble!

[BlueStinger]

In the original I've twice had voidouts happen from leaving mules dead in their camps. Both times I was no where near, and had to reload a save. Also, there's a video posted in another thread showing an NPC porter triggering a voidout by wandering into an area with a BT from a dead body the player had deposited on their route.

I've not killed anyone in the DC, as it's just as easy to not kill anyone, but I doubt anything has changed on that front, though I can't confirm of course yet.

[Zloth]

Originally posted by Yellow Herb:

That does give me the idea to try kill a porter while they're inside a building somehow, just to see what happens, odds are they will just get despawned by the CDT again but hey, research.

This is why the term "mad scientist" was invented. ;)

The shoes are a weird mechanic as is. They give you a way to haul an extra pair along, but why bother? Even the level 1 shoes take some time to wear out and the game warns you when they are starting to get remotely close. Plus there are plant-shoes around. I don't see how anyone is going to have to go barefoot unless they want to.

When DS2 shows up, I hope they either do something more interesting with the shoes or just ignore them completely.

P.S. For carrying a heavy load up a mountain while barefoot, you are hereby awarded an honorary Samwise Gamgee achievement.

[cswiger]

^ The mechanic doesn't do much at normal, but try playing on a harder difficulty.

Your shoes wear out much faster, especially in the face of timefall, and Sam suffers more significant damage going barefoot. And better boots affect traction, which matters more at hard and very hard.

[Zloth]

Oooh, so the difficulty level is bringing them down to bothersome gnat level. That makes sense, thanks!

[noir_7]

Good read. Thanks for posting this. You knew that a lot of us would waste time doing similar stuff. You never know what kinda hidden results you can find poking around in Kojima games.

[BlueStinger]

Originally posted by Zloth:

Oooh, so the difficulty level is bringing them down to bothersome gnat level. That makes sense, thanks!

Normal difficulty is a doddle in this game, combat is a joke and timefall/snowfall can be all but ignored. Boots, while not actually being a big problem on very hard, wear out fast enough that it does make me keep an eye out for Chiral boots instead of not caring about them on normal. The terroists with omnireflector boots are a good source too. Any of the crafted ones are 3rd choice. I'm happiest with 2 extra pairs on the hook.

Originally posted by Yellow Herb:

I completely forgot difficulty is even a thing in this game, that might explain why the NPC porters in my run completely avoided BT zones all together, if i ever do this again ill need to make sure i put it to what ever the highest difficulty is.

It likely is difficulty. Multiple BT's can spawn from multiple bodies. Here's a reddit post of a guy stacking them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DeathStranding/duplicates/eio1rt/gotta_stretch_my_legs/

A selection showing npcs causing a voidout. There are more examples too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOqwxK5yErY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIZ9D4F0nwc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNHCBSUluRw