Sundred Pass Expedition - More Spoilers than you can shake a torch at

[darkscaryforest]

First, don't worry I won't let you down:

Yes I am in the second story of the half snowed in house with a large timberwolf pack dwelling just outside wishing to murder me. I said I wasn't going to be in this situation, but I am in this situation.

I knew something something safe way to weather station and something something not safe way. I have successfully, 100% found the not safe ways. I crossed the bane bridge and Lotte's rest to cascading gap. I explored the nearby cave system that goes to prayerful window, idle hideout, and the canyon below. I fought my way past placid notch and also destroyed the pack guarding the pass back to the frozen river/large open cave area near cascading gap.

I get it now. Everything on this side of the map is the 'bad way'. I was supposed to take the far range cave system, but I really wanted to enter from transfer pass.

SO I still have 35 revolver bullets, 7 flare gun shots, and 3 or so flares. I left a hunting rifle full of ammo not too far back. Since I'm here, I am curious about what's in the rest of the area. I see 3 interesting directions- 1 is the bridge, another is a pass upward to the right of it, and then I see another hut past the house on the far side.

What do you think, is the exploration in this field of death worth the real chances I'll run out of ammo? Or should I go to the canyon below to see if I can link up with the other side of the map?


Just an aside: this guy is a newish save (day 12 right now). You can actually gear up VERY quickly on stalker by looting Forsaken Airfield and Zone of Contamination. Only major bummer is no crampons and backpack, but getting those doubles the prep time. I think it would actually be quicker to start over in FA than if I were to walk all the way back to transfer pass -> FA -> far range cave.

Cheers!

[darkscaryforest]

Well I ventured from the house and explored nearby areas. After some circles around placid notch and a dead end at Roamer's cave, I finally stumbled upon regretful shortcut. Through the mine I eventually found my way to the correct mountain with the rope climb to the weather station. Very cool map

[Veskaida]

Day 12 is pretty crazy early to be trying TFT, though, I suppose there might be benefits to rushing it that early (at least on Interloper since it's only gonna get colder over time lol). I'd consider all the TFT regions harder than "Lower Great Bear", and given how cold/dangerous they are, seems like Hinterlands has likely tuned them towards end-game geared characters.

Yeah, SP is pretty spooky. From the various discussions I've seen about the corners of the internet, seems like most players agree it's probably the hardest zone. If you can believe it, it was even harder at launch till ~1 month after, where there were even 'more' timberwoofs.

If it makes you feel better, I took a similar route (of pain) when I entered SP for the first time: climbed in from Transfer Pass (imo, the transfer cave system is longer but 'much' easier because it's a cave so it's warm), and then followed the road assuming that would lead to the Weather Station to progress the tale. Haha. Also, I didn't realize that avalache'd building you mentioned was even enter-able till like 3 playthroughs later: basically just hid in the cave overlooking that avalached townsite (near the vista) instead.

One word of advice: if you're trying to do the 3rd Tale: "Final Horizon" there is a rope climb (up) which I believe is the longest climb in the game (continuous, without a ledge). Far as I understand, it isn't possible to make it without wearing Crampons/Improvised Crampons or using an Emergency Stim without your Stamina depleting (and thus risking falling, likely to your death). Best way to learn a region is play it, so I'm sure you're getting a lot of valuable info doing this!

[darkscaryforest]

Origineel geplaatst door Veskaida:

Day 12 is pretty crazy early to be trying TFT, though, I suppose there might be benefits to rushing it that early (at least on Interloper since it's only gonna get colder over time lol)

This was just on stalker. Haven't found motivation to gear up an interloper since the save reset. I'll need to relearn the meta after all the game changes are done.

I was interested in coming up with a "quick way to gear up a survivor" guide to for the region. I knew FA and ZoC pretty well from the other tales so I thought I'd give it a go.

-You have to go to FA to find the radio and repair the transmitter, so I figured spawning there makes sense.
-On stalker, you start with a bedroll and matches which is nice to get you rolling.
-After searching the air field and nearby trailer thoroughly, you can get some decent clothing including an aviator cap, aviator jacket, a flashlight, a stim, coffee, plenty of matches, various tools, a few lumps of coal, and a dozen pistol bullets or so.
-There's a nice hidden cache near the airfield that has some flares for you.
-You can pick up the flare gun with a few bullets at final approach, on the way to Mindful Cabin
-The cabin (just follow the long road) has a hidden compartment containing a pistol with 10 bullets. I got lucky and had mukluks spawn there too!
-Not far from the cabin is another hidden cache that had climbing socks and wool long johns.
-Drift Island has a cabin of its own containing a bow and 3 arrows.

You can probably get away with just this..but there's plenty more goodies in ZoC:

-Taking the cave to ZoC, I went to the concentrator building (just be careful of wolves and shoe damage)
-The control room accessible from pipes leading from a hopper has the miner's flashlight (did not grab, didn't think extra .25kg was worth it), 10 pistol bullets, a stim
-think I found a lantern in the building as well
-After grabbing the respirator and ~2-3 canisters, you can run through the gas on the 1st floor of the mine to get the key to the lock box on the same floor which contains another 10 pistol bullets and 10 rifle ammo I think
-The 2nd floor mine has a locked office (key is on a different corpse) and contains a hunting rifle with bullets. There's also a gun cleaning kit somewhere
-I forget where exactly, but snagged a military coat here too

There's a bearskin bedroll in Transfer Pass, but I didn't take it due to weight. Managing weight was probably the hardest part of it, as I only had 35kg with well fed. I had a warmth bonus of 26 C which I think was good enough.

I booked it out of ZoC and entered from transfer pass...but next time I'm totally going back to the cave to enter Sundered like you recommended. By taking the road up from Transfer Pass entrance, I unknowingly made a huge circle around the map before even starting the tale.

Origineel geplaatst door Veskaida:

If you can believe it, it was even harder at launch till ~1 month after, where there were even 'more' timberwoofs.

Oh yeah, I remember reading something like you can pull 20 timberwolves at the settlement area back then. I don't think I ever had to deal with more than 6 at once

Origineel geplaatst door Veskaida:

if you're trying to do the 3rd Tale: "Final Horizon" there is a rope climb (up) which I believe is the longest climb in the game (continuous, without a ledge). Far as I understand, it isn't possible to make it without wearing Crampons/Improvised Crampons or using an Emergency Stim without your Stamina depleting (and thus risking falling, likely to your death)

Is that the one leading up to Roamer's Cave and the stairs to the peak? Yeah...I got extremely lucky the first time I went up that. No crampons or stim, just a coffee to get me to near full stamina. The last 15 seconds of the climb was a crawl and I think it was just good RNG that got me to the top lol. That was before I knew I had to go there for the tale.
Second time I used a stim.

Had a couple close calls with blizzards and not knowing where the heck I was. It took me forever to find Last Lonely House. It was a nice map, but I don't know when I'll return.

[Veskaida]

Origineel geplaatst door darkscaryforest:

I booked it out of ZoC and entered from transfer pass...but next time I'm totally going back to the cave to enter Sundered like you recommended. By taking the road up from Transfer Pass entrance, I unknowingly made a huge circle around the map before even starting the tale.

Had a couple close calls with blizzards and not knowing where the heck I was. It took me forever to find Last Lonely House. It was a nice map, but I don't know when I'll return.

I agree, if you were trying to 'speedrun' all the Tales, starting in FA is the logical choice. That's pretty lucky loot though for Stalker: on Interloper I've found 0-1 Hockey Jersey, 0-1 Aviator Cap, and 0-1 Aviator Jacket after looting the entire world, so to find any of those items in FA is pretty fortunate, though I think their odds are favored for FA, especially at some indoors locations in Hangar and inside certain vehicles. If your goal was purely to complete the tales asap, I'd probably disregard weapons entirely (except 1 stone for scaring off wolves), and just focus on flares for timbies: though even that I don't think more than 3 blue flares or 2 red flares is really necessary.

Yeah, I believe there is a guaranteed spawn point for at least 1 Lantern in the mine in ZOC on all difficulties.

Personally I find it much easier to access FA and SP from traveling to ZOC and taking the intra-TFT cave on harder modes, it's always warm in there, and plenty of coal so easy to start campfires/chain torches. Allows you to bypass the pretty long and cold FA and SP entry pathways coming in the 'intended' way.

[PowerOn]

Start Interloper games in SP (custom - default Interloper profile), in one of spawn variations will find bedroll and heavy hammer. It's the most difficult Interloper spawn of all maps.

The best bet is go direct to Weather Station in day one, you can't run because need stamina for climb the rope for Weather Station.

Through the mine(?) path require go to partially buried house first for pick cloth for make snow shelter.