Hunter slugcat's 'time limit' = Hibernation limit

[CtenosaurOaxacana]

Clarifying for curious & new players uncertain about playing Hunter.
Hunter has as much time as any other slugcat, in most ways.
They have the same time to survive before the rain arrives as most other slugcats.
They can die as many times as it takes to reach the next shelter with enough food.

But Hunter does not have an infinite # of times to safely save the game!
Unlike every other slugcat, Hunter's cycles do not count up, they count down.

So every time Hunter hibernates with food in shelters, aka saves the game,
whether in same shelter or another, they have one less cycle to survive.

More specifically, when they reach 0 cycles, they don't just drop dead.
But they will start negative # cycles with starving effects by default...
and next death is permanent.

Obviously players familiar with the game and Hunter already understand all this.
But I often see the mechanic change referred to as 'time limit',
when it's not really that.

[RCMidas]

Because surviving after Cycle 0 becomes increasingly difficult and it typically requires you to be both PHENOMENALLY lucky and extremely skilled to do so with anything remotely approaching consistency. If you haven't delivered your payload, visited enough Echoes, and starting heading into the Depths by this point...well, good luck surviving.

Or be Turtle Toad. Who decided to START a Hunter on 0 cycles. Because why wouldn't she?

[CtenosaurOaxacana]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

Because surviving after Cycle 0 becomes increasingly difficult and it typically requires you to be both PHENOMENALLY lucky and extremely skilled to do so with anything remotely approaching consistency. If you haven't delivered your payload, visited enough Echoes, and starting heading into the Depths by this point...well, good luck surviving.
Or be Turtle Toad. Who decided to START a Hunter on 0 cycles. Because why wouldn't she?

Honestly, so long as you are good and clever about the storing enough food
to get out of 'starving phase' at start of each cycle,
(for some reason I thought the starving-like status gets neutralized when fed?)

So it's basically transformed into a perma-death save, with a big downside...
JUST DON'T QUIT AFTER THE 30 SECOND GRACE PERIOD AT START OF CYCLE,
OR THAT COUNTS AS A LOSS/DEATH LOL (according to the wiki anyway)
This is why Hunter is still technically the 'true' hard mode.

But people gotta be aware it's not as harsh as maybe it sounds.
I was worried the first time I tried,
that I was totally screwed from dying multiple times near the start.
When it literally made zero difference on my # of tries or whatever.*
It's SAVING multiple times that will ♥♥♥♥ you over, lol!

* = but can mess with your run if you're trying to pass a high level karma gate soon

[chaotic_neutralism]

Its the only scug that you can really 'lose' as. I, having completed every other slug and having 100+ hours in the game was able to do it in 20 cycles, but i would have failed without my map knowledge which saved SO much time skipping FA. Its not easy but with a good plan and solid gameplay its perfectly doable. The real killer is karma farming, if you have low karma in the wrong place the cycles it takes to regain it will kill your run.

[CtenosaurOaxacana]

Originally posted by chaotic_neutralism:

The real killer is karma farming, if you have low karma in the wrong place the cycles it takes to regain it will kill your run.

Exactly. If you've just passed a karma gate and rested at a new shelter,
more often than not you can die all you like for awhile.

But the closer you travel to the next karma gate,
the more likely you'll be screwed by excess deaths if the karma level demand is high.
It's not the dying itself that sacrifices multiple cycles: it's 'catching up' on karma.