Is it even possible to save everyone on Chapter 4 on original difficulty?

[Crusher Von Splattenheim]

Can anyone give me any tips and tricks on how to do it because I'm at a complete loss.

[wusch]

You can do it, I myself sadly lost the doctor on day 19 but important is this, as morale is the most important factor, even before food wich is quite near to it:
- let always donald repair the Radio, he is faster and the better the state of the radio is, the slower the morale loss is, so repair it ever day.
- let always everyone sleep, except the situation is very bad (you have 0-1 food let after feeding the people for example)
- always cook the food (Marvin just needs raw meat), it's good for the morale
- give the wild predator talk after an attack (and only then, otherwise it will lower your teams morale), same goes for the topic Death
- never let the fire go out, this saves turns and bullets
- if you hear a howling in the morning, the predators attack at this night, so make more spears

[Matan]

Yes, it is possible. after some expirements and restarts, I've manage to do it in my 1st try.
You should always hunt with spears. always give Jack a cooked meal (it seems to make him not fail ever more, brining more food etc.). Feed Marvin once every 3 days (I don't know what is his limits though). You don't really need to talk with other people, as they will get -1 if they are feed raw meat every day. make sure to make group talks about the radio or team work to raise moral. always have 1 medicine availe and make a new one once you use your last one. repair the radio once every turn to finish it exactly when you have 1 day left.

[Strangle McDangle]

Some tips:

- You start with a good stockpile of food. Don't worry about exhausting it in the first few days and get the radio to 30%, that will slow down the daily decrease in morale. Only use Donald to repair as he repairs slightly faster than Brandon.

- PRIORITIZE THE RADIO. If your guys have to go hungry for a night here and there it's worth it. Once the radio is at 80% the morale decreases even less and when it gets to 100% morale basically fills up and more or less becomes a non-issue. Plus, you can stop worrying about squeezing in turns to repair the radio here and there, and then you can focus on the important stuff.

- ALWAYS have at least 1 medicine in stock. If the doctor gets sick and you have no antidotes you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

- Make spears when possible, hunt with Jack during the night (his morale starts much higher than the others, but don't push him too much because he can break too) and save your bullets for the predators.

- You can use bullets to hunt about 2 or 3 times and still have some left for predators, but don't use bullets to hunt unless you're about to go to bed hungry with low morale.

- Pep talks seem like a HUGE waste of turns (3 turns) but when morale gets to somewhere between 2-5 for more than one person they are a must. Ignore almost everything else to get a good "Saving the world" or "Teamwork" or some context-appropriate speech if something else is more relevant. Whatever morale you think you would lose will be gained by the boost.

- You can prepare pep talks in advance and deliver them later. When you can squeeze in the time it's worth preparing a few for those emergency morale situations.

- It SEEMS like people will only run away if they have 0 or less morale after supper (not verified) but I've regularly had people go to sleep with 1 morale and not go running off. Keep an eye on the Doc as he's a gigantic wuss and his morale seems to drop randomly for no reason.

- When it comes down to morale vs resources, resources usually win out unless people are at LOW morale (4 or less). People won't run away if they have 1 or 2 so sometimes it's way more worth it to cook some food for everyone rather than waste a turn just talking to one person. Just make sure you have a pep talk ready the next day.

- Only feed marvin once every 3 days or so. He can go hungry for a while (not sure how long) but has no morale to worry about so feeding him more than that is kind of a waste

- If only one person's morale is low, talk to them to raise it by 1 for each talk, and someone on this forum said it prevents their morale from dropping for a few days but I haven't been able to test that yet.

- If you're out of spears and still need food, hunting with Marvin isn't the worst idea. Sometimes he comes through and saves your ass and no need to waste spears or ammo, but the chance isn't great so only use this as a last resort

- Don't work people overnight unless they seriously have morale to spare. Hunting with the spears with Jack overnight is usually fine though because he tends to have high morale but keep tabs on it because if you lose him you're pretty screwed

- If worse comes to worse, have the Doc make 2-4 antidotes and kill him for food. Prepare the death pep talk and deliver it the night you kill him. The death talk more or less mitigates the morale loss and you get a cool 7 food (ish) and one less mouth to feed.
[EDIT] I realize the above tip doesn't apply to saving the whole crew, but it is nonetheless good advice for this level so I'm leaving it in.

- Did I mention to prioritize the radio? Seriously, spend 2-3 turns a day working on that ♥♥♥♥. The boost in morale once you finish is totally worth it and the 30 and 80 thresholds are awesome.

- Don't worry too much about cooking food right off the bat. Cook if you can, or if someone has low morale but otherwise prioritize radio. Once the radio is done you'll have all the time in the world to hunt and cook.

Hopefully these help, and sorry for the wall of text. I'm just in the process of getting "The Psychiatrist" achievement which is to not let anyone get depressed and THAT is hard as balls. As an aside does anyone know what the morality threshold is for 'depressed' in hard numbers? 2? 4? It's definitely not 0.

[Empiro]

OK. I just ran some extensive tests on things, and it looks like there's a lot of wrong information out there.

- I'm almost certain that radio repair progress (at least up to 60%) has no effect on the morale drop. You get +4 morale when you complete the radio, and that's it.
- Everyone loses 3 morale per day until you talk to them once. Once you do that, this seems to stop altogether. This means that I highly recommend the first day's action be: add log, shoot log, talk, talk, talk (everyone except Jack, then talk to Jack on day 2). After this, if you make no one work through the night and have enough food, you pretty much have no morale problems at all, even after an animal attack (you can still give the talk to boost morale further).
- Jack doesn't lose morale working through the night. However, the Dr. loses 2 morale. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not.
- Eating raw food makes you lose 1 morale.
- Marvin can be starved for 2 days with no issues I believe (definitely 1 day).
- Someone paralyzed can survive for 2 days, and they don't eat during those 2 nights, so unless you really need someone, you shouldn't cure them right away.
- When you hear growling in the morning, it means you'll be attacked that night. I've found that even with 9 spears, you lose all the spears, and can still get food stolen. Therefore, I recommend that you keep around 6 spears, and don't keep too much excess food before getting attacked.
-Finally, make sure you recognize the states of the campfire. When the fire is small, you'll want to add a log.

[billy]

so you can add a log at the right time and the fire will never go out? so you only need to shoot a log once in theory?

[Empiro]

That's correct. This was something that I recognized very late. It would have been helpful to know ahead of time.

It can be a bit difficult to tell when the fire is medium versus low, so make sure to look closely.

[GDK]

Also does the keep everyone alive counts when someone runs away or not? (and the same does gets nobody depressed counts when killing someone before it happens)?

[shadowmatter]

After struggling dozens of times, I just beat it on Normal difficulty without losing anyone. The advice above I took to heart was a) talking to Sarah, to Donald, and to the doctor on the first day, and b) focusing on the radio.

Here was my gameplan for days 1-4:

day 1: add wood to fire, shoot wood, talk to Sarah, to Donald, and to the doctor
day 2: Donald repairs x5
day 3: Donald repairs x5
day 4: get wood, add wood to fire, Donald repairs x3

At this point, your morale should be pretty good, and it won't be dropping much because the radio is almost 70%. But you'll be out of food, so the next day make spears first thing and hunt a few times. In fact, you're going to need to focus on hunting for a few days to be comfortable with your food supply again.

But don't let up on the radio. I think I fixed the radio around day 9. Note that the second you fix the radio, everyone gets a big morale boost. So say your radio is at 80%, you have 4 rations of food, and everyone is on 1 or 2 morale. What should you do? The correct answer is for Donald to repair x4 in one day and immediately put everyone back in good spirits.

Other items of note:

- I didn't give any pep talks. Instead, if someone had low morale (the lowest I had was someone at 2 morale) I talked with them, and tried to give them a cooked meal. After the radio was fixed, I think I was cooking once every three days or so.
- I rested everyone every night. This was good for morale, and isn't as crazy an idea as it sounds if you focused on the radio early. The last 10 days or so should really be just focusing on hunting for and cooking food.
- On the last night, everyone (even Marvin!) even had a cooked meal! :-)

Goooooood luck.

[Crusher Von Splattenheim]

Wow... you guys are awesome! Thanks for all the advice!

[Empiro]

It's really the talking that help a lot. Like I said, everyone loses 3 morale / day until you talk to them once. Then it stops for good. They still lose morale from eating raw food, working in the night, and animal attacks, and so on, but you can take your time on the radio if you want. I recently replayed it and fixed my radio on day 20, yet had no morale problems at all.

[Chanman]

Sarah is the one whose morale you have the pay the closest attention to. The Radio pep talk will fix Donald up pretty good, and saving the world does wonders for the Doctor and Jack.

I think you have to talk to at least Sarah. If you skip talking and go straight to pep talks like I did at first, it was basically impossilble to maintain her morale. The teamwork pep talk + raw food without talking to her would only give no drop in morale instead of -4.

[billy]

good advice on here . Seems like talking to the 3 quickly is the key , i never did that and it seemed impossible to keep them all alive yet incredibly easy to just keep a few alive. This chapter could have done with some tweaking/changing.

[sugurbabi]

Too bad no one listened when I was saying you need to talk to them to make morale stop dropping :P Ohwell glad it's figured out :)