Experiences with Survival Mode

[Chi]

First time, two cubs survived and it was an exciting journey! I lost one by the lake because there was no food around and by the time I found a single rabbit I heard the cub's dying cry ;_; Then from there I went to the tundra with grown cubs. Again, having trouble finding food, one collapsed RIGHT about the time the wolves decided to pop in! My and my two remaining cubs watched from a platform as the wolves ran over and killed the cub.

All in all I was very pleased by the new survival mode! Being a good hunter is very important (Even though the rabbits aren't super fast anymore I still found them harder to catch or maybe I'm just rusty) and there's a bit of 'luck' involved as well. You just have to hope that around that next rock or tree is food!

[Inushiro]

well, after something around 6~8 generations totally dead(jetpack hares)my first generations with ''normal hares'' 2 survive(2 dead in teenager...in the mountain, we are in the rock when the wolves come, i got a hare and they didnt get up to eat....idk if is because the wolves, but when the wolves leave, both dead) the second one, 4 survived(REALLY HARD) in the 1 spring, just hares for the cubs, in the late summer/early autumn we went to the forest area, just hare and pheasants, none deer =(, so...autumn and winter in the forest...the second spring, mountain time!
Nothing in the mountain, hares, or pheasant...so they starts to fall...oh good where is the preys?! so for the entery spring, one cub fall, i got a hare, so another fall...another hare...
In summer with a miracle i found some nests and my biggest cub(the white) sometimes got some preys(2 times a hare!) what really helped..(and again none deer this year)so with everyone well feed autumn comes and everyone leaves me \o/

[Enila]

All of my cubs survived at my first survival playthrough. It's not so bad if you use everything the nature offers you, and make sure you don't waste your stamina. Use your eyes, and don't run randomly. Try to catch two rabbits in one run if there's a pack of them. Forget about pheasants if you don't have the skills. Personally, I ignored them. Too hard to catch.
Also for example, during spring, you can go find some nests just by watching if there's an owl on a tree. If yes, there's a nest. Or, in general, drink some water if you want to gain stamina easily, and if your cubs haven't ate for a while. It'll keep them alive longer, and you'll have enough time to catch a prey.
Don't go to the tundra until your cubs have grown up, so you don't have to worry about the climbing part.

Also, it's all about luck sometimes. Two times one of my cubs almost died of starvation - not at the point they weren't moving, but they were crying. I don't know if picking them up helps them to last longer - it may save their stamina, who knows ? -, but that's what I did.

[Abby]

I can't, sorry, It's way too much at stake ;_;
I can't have them die again, normal mode for me.

[Chi]

I am so nerdy I implimented 'dice' into my gameplay. It's a regular monopoly style dice and I marked two sides "snowflake, lake, home." I roll it to decide where I go (so far I've done one region for cubs and then moved for teenagers). That way each playthrough is somewhat different bc I never know where I'll be going and hunting.

[friendly]

Originally posted by ccrstarpanda:

I am so nerdy I implimented 'dice' into my gameplay. It's a regular monopoly style dice and I marked two sides "snowflake, lake, home." I roll it to decide where I go (so far I've done one region for cubs and then moved for teenagers). That way each playthrough is somewhat different bc I never know where I'll be going and hunting.

This is the best thing on the forums in a while haha. Awesome.

Does anyone know how collectibles work when switching between normal and hard mode? Do I lose them just while I switch and they come back when I go back to normal? I just want to be sure I don't lose my progress.

[Enila]

Originally posted by Fangorn:

Originally posted by ccrstarpanda:

I am so nerdy I implimented 'dice' into my gameplay. It's a regular monopoly style dice and I marked two sides "snowflake, lake, home." I roll it to decide where I go (so far I've done one region for cubs and then moved for teenagers). That way each playthrough is somewhat different bc I never know where I'll be going and hunting.

This is the best thing on the forums in a while haha. Awesome.

Does anyone know how collectibles work when switching between normal and hard mode? Do I lose them just while I switch and they come back when I go back to normal? I just want to be sure I don't lose my progress.

You won't loose your progress, and you can switch back to normal mode on the same save whenever you want - you just have to go back at the menu first !

[Ikko]

Hey guys so I've been playing Shelter 2 pretty obsessively since it came out, and I was really excited about the recent survival mode update. First time? Ok, kicked my butt, granted; I only got one cub to adulthood. But second play through I raised 4 cubs. I saw some guides on here about how to be the best lynx mom on survival, and none of them mentioned my strategy.

So I tried this out and it worked; first time on survival, the game glitched twice (both in tundra area) and I ended up losing two cubs to the mechanics. Partially my fault, partially the game's fault. But !! Second playthrough was much more sucessful; four cubs to adulthood, and after waiting for the 'fog' event in the first area, I moved my family to live in the tundra for the entire winter (and all of spring actually, we left in the autumn just because I was lazy and wanted to be near the den early).

I'm sure most of you have figured out that the tundra is the most fruitful place to hunt in winter, which is why they have the wolf events, to balance it. The wolves were a huge problem for me in the first playthrough on survival, but I realized that once the kittens are on the ledge, they can't get back down without your help......so why not keep them up there? I experimented at the end of my first generation. I didn't move from the rock for the entire winter. I was able to get more than enough rabbits to sustain myself. The trick was to sneak down from the ledge instead of jumping down, which is not stealthed and which gives you a lot of extra length to the jump...so if you head straight towards prey, you'd end up scaring it off. So to just creep down from the ledge, the area was able to provide me with close to 30 rabbits -- from one ledge. In other words, I didn't go farther than I could see. Most of the time, I would come back from a kill, see that a new batch of rabbits had respawned, dropped that rabbit in the grass, and hunted two more, to have three. I caught two deer during this time, which I served as my main means of food -- I ate a rabbit if I was able to hunt a deer. It was harder to keep track of how many rabbits each 'ledge area' was able to yield in the second survival playthrough, since I had the cubs, but it wasn't as much as the solo winter I had after the cubs grew up in the first game. But I moved them from ledge to ledge, so the strategy still worked to protect them from wolves, keep them safe, and keep them fed. It's important to note that I tried to situate my cubs in the middle of the valley, for this reason; if I chased the deer, which tend to spawn on the edges of the map, they had a great chance of going through the middle at some point.Through this experiment I found out :


* Prey will not rot. As long as you stay in the region, your kills will be available later to eat. Mice, rabbits, deer, pheasants, frogs...the only ones this doesn't apply to, of course, are the owl-tree-things. This is how I was able to keep them on the ledge -- because all I tried to eat was deer. 1/2 of the deer will get you to full stamina if you let your lynx rest and reset the stamina to the max bar.

* The tundra is still the best place to get food BUT ONLY if you are a skilled hunter, aka you can guarantee at least one rabbit per short hunt (obv. two is better)

* Your kittens will be safe so long as you put them up onto the ledge BEFORE the wolves get there (obviously easy to get yourself up)

* If you are meticulous and careful about your stamina, you don't actually have to move very far -- when I was nervous I would move kittens one by one in my mouth from ledge to ledge

* The rate of respawn is actually not very long; it's just considerably longer than what we're used to in normal mode. But imagine each respawn point as having it's own timer, with the player marker the aoe range setting the timer to start over again (every time you startle a camp). So you still have to move around, but you don't actually have to move from region to region IF you're careful

* The range at which your cubs will notice food around them grows as they grow. So when I had them on ledges, I'd end up hunting rabbits and losing them in the grass. The white one was the largest, and kept getting to be the largest, because it's sense of the area was wider than the others, so it got to carcasses faster, when I eventually DID bring the cubs down. This might have also been because it was 'stronger' than the others, so it ran faster; I'm still not sure.

[Chi]

Mentioning 'prey don't rot' could make a 'cache' possible! You could stash a few rabbits in a certain place in case u need them later. However you'd prob need to eat them before the transition to cub teenage years bc I don't think prey items remain after that happens. I've caught a rabbit and lost my catch due to the transition happening.

[Loaf]

Has anyone else noticed that lemmings and frogs are much less common? I haven't caught any lemmings (though my cubs have) and I can only remember one frog.

[Ikko]

Frogs are only in the spring and summer. Once the leaves turn orange, they despawn. Lemmings only spawn from their burrow holes, where as rabbits spawn everywhere. Lemmings are all year long, but I notice their respawn rates are much higher when the grass is green.

[Loaf]

I know when/were they normally spawn (I found a whole load of frogs just after I posted!) but the lemmings are still a no-show. I used to catch them quite regularly, so to see none at all is quite a difference.

[Ikko]

To be fair, I haven't -seen- any lemmings in survival mode; the cost to stamina for smell is enough that I only use it every 20 steps or so, so I wouldn't have had much of a chance to see them. I have heard my adult cubs catch them behind me when we pass by them, though. I accidentally caught a few in my first survival year, but I wasn't even focusing on them. I'd be chasing rabbits and I'd happen to go over a hole. I think in survival mode the amount of time they spend out of their holes is much shorter...I think it's the tactic real animals have to use to catch burrowing creatures; to just sit and wait for them to come out, or be lucky and happen to pass by one when it happens to be out.

[Chi]

Originally posted by asthehind:

Has anyone else noticed that lemmings and frogs are much less common? I haven't caught any lemmings (though my cubs have) and I can only remember one frog.

I would hear their little 'squeak' but then I would smell and not see any. I wonder if you'd have to wait near a hole like butterfly suggested. Then again, it wouldn't be worth the time since they give such little stamina.

[Loaf]

Yeah, but I like 'em. :3 I'll have to try waiting by a hole!

[SneakyGremlin]

I just finished my first survival mode and only one cub survived.

What happens if they all die? Does the family tree get whiped out and you'll have to start a new game?