The Long Dark Noob Academy - #1 - The most important tip ever!

The most important tip for new players to improve and move as soon as possible to the highest difficulty modes in the game.

Video Version

Hello everyone,

If you don’t feel like reading at the moment, you can check the video version of this guide here:

Introduction

I’m back at playing The Long Dark. I didn’t remember how much I like this game. Being off your favorite games for some time makes you realize how much you loved playing them!
Anyways, now that I’m back at this awesome survival simulator, The Long Dark, I realize how little I know about the game itself. It’s an awesome game, and even if I’ve played for around 120 hours so far, I don’t have much knowledge of it. And by this I mean, being able to survive more than 10 days in Interloper (the highest difficulty mode in the game).
I see a lot of other streamers and youtubers that are masters at this game, surviving for 100+ days easily on Interloper. That’s crazy good for my standards. I feel like a total noob in comparison!
My personal history with this game started around 2 years ago, with one gameplay on Stalker (on level beneath the highest difficulty, Interloper), surviving for something around 14 days, and only in Mystery Lake. You can watch that fresh experience in this series in my YouTube channel. Then, I started playing on Inteloper, doing countless runs, lasting for no longer than 10 or 11 days each time.

The Most Important Advice Ever

So I started thinking about what is the key difference, that main distinction between those jedi masters of TLD and me. And the answer is the core of this first tip: knowing the maps inside out!
The main difference between the experienced players, those that can last for several hundred days on Interloper, and us, the starting noob bunnies is that they know where everything is, or mostly everything. They know where the shelters are, where the resources are, where are the areas where you can hunt, where are the areas that have potential hostile animals, they know how much time is going to take for them to reach different areas. All this knowledge comes from tons of time playing the game and exploring.
So my first noob tip, for all of you, but specially for me, is to learn the maps first. Learn how to navigate through The Long Dark World comfortably by exploring every area in the game.
The main problem is that this required learning exploration is very hard to achieve on the highest difficulty level, Interloper. So you if you are like me, and you love though and high difficulty levels from the start, it’s going to be a rough trip. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try it, but definitely is going to set you down and prevent you from “learning” faster.
When you play in Inteloper, resources are very scarce, and you will need to be moving constantly in order to survive. When you are out of food, out of matches or any other basic survival resource or tool, you will need to move or you will die. But move where? You don’t know the maps yet, so this would be forced exploration into the unknown.
For some of you this would seem to be the true experience of the game, and let me say that I understand you. I felt the same for a long time. But to improve faster on this game, you need to learn the world. And it’s going to take you a lot more time if you are dying constantly.
I hope you find this tip useful. I’m experimenting myself with this and my let’s plays are published on my YouTube channel if you want to give them a try. Also you can watch me live weekly on Twitch[www.twitch.tv].
Thanks a lot, and see you in the next tip, on The Long Dark Noob Academy.