Not many survival games can impose the value of dear life unto you the way The Long Dark does. While it still incorporates the typical survival mechanics like babysitting your character, The Long Dark makes environmental hazards, such as cold weather, more involved; that means the environment can kill you here just as much as your own lack of adherence to your character’s hierarchy of needs.
To that end, it’s an intimidating survival game even when compared to the likes of Ark: Survival Evolved, Minecraft, or The Forest. Fooling around in The Long Dark and not taking things seriously is a sure way of turning your character into a meat popsicle reserve for the local wildlife. So place yourself a little higher on the food chain by taking note of these beginner must-dos.
Updated October 31, 2021, by Sid Natividad: No matter how long you’ve played The Long Dark, the game will still manage to blindside you with its harsh mechanics. Beginners need more help than ever in their first foray into this winter apocalypse. More of The Long Dark tips certainly wouldn’t hurt as it has many layers of mechanical complexities that mimic real-world survival.
Thus, the Long Dark guide calls for an update and more warnings for newbie players. If you fall into that category, this will save you a lot of time and effort as well as some disheartening defeats. Because it’s certainly better to learn from the mistakes of others. So from the veterans of the title, here is more of what the beginners should learn.
15 Be Wary Of Low-Condition Items
A common practice in survival games is to hoard as many items as you can. Because you’ll never know when you might run out of specific stuff or when you might need some items later. However, you will need to be wiser and smarter about which items to hoard.
That’s because more than half of all the items in The Long Dark are usually in bad shape. A character who wears a low-condition piece of clothing, for example, might as well be naked out in the cold because it offers little to no bonuses depending on the severity of its degradation.
14 Take Note Of Decay
That isn’t to say the good-condition items you find will remain pristine and in mint condition. Like all things in this transient earthly existence, objects will decay in The Long Dark. That very well means your favorite piece of sweater or mitts will eventually be useless. But better them than you.
Guns and melee weapons are also not exempt from this gradual death. They do have better longevity though since oftentimes, weapon decay is based on how often or how carelessly you use these tools. Meanwhile, clothing, on top of decaying in condition regularly, will also break during combat, especially if a bear gets too angrily intimate with you. Predators can rip apart your clothes.
13 Prioritize “Feels Like” Temperature
Temperature is a huge system in The Long Dark that can sometimes be more important than keeping track of time. It comes in three flavors, the actual temperature, the wind temperature, and ‘feels like." The most important among these three, of course, is the last one.
This is the temperature’s impact on your character. So don’t be deceived by seemingly safe ambient air temperatures, a sudden wind chill can become deadly fast if you’re unprepared. This way, you also know which areas are naturally more windy and you can avoid them strategically.
12 Stock Up On Fire Crafting Materials
One of the best ways to combat the temperature that your character can feel is by keeping some means to create fire. This comes in the form of fuel such as:
Some fuel is more effective than others. Coal, for that matter, is the best among these fuel sources. Other than that, you will need a fire starter such as matches or good old-fashioned firestrikers. Other ignition sources are flares, lit torches, and magnifying lenses - if you’re desperate.
11 Freeze Meat In Cold Ground
Despite the overwhelming hopelessness of the cold, you can actually use it to your advantage to a certain degree. As you’re well aware, raw meat will spoil fast in a warm and moist area, particularly storage. You can thus drop any raw meat you’ve stocked up on the snow, assuming the temperature is cold.
This will actually freeze the meat and prolong its shelf-life. You can then take the frozen meat afterward so you have emergency food for your explorations. You can even experiment with other food in the game that has a short shelf-life to see which ones you can preserve.
10 Play On Pilgrim Or Voyager first
First thing’s first, you’ll want to get a feel of the game before diving into the brutal stuff. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve invested dozens of hours on Rust or won many times in other survival games, The Long Dark is a solitary and blindsiding experience.
Thankfully, it offers several difficulty levels so you can check out the best places to make camp or discover some of the more obscure mechanics of the game. If you want something safe, then Pilgrim mode should do. Something a little more challenging would be Voyager; both modes are better at introducing people to the game than looking up maps or walkthroughs.
9 Prioritize Protection Against The Cold
In The Long Dark, your worst enemy isn’t your own stomach, nor the bears and wolves; it’s the cold. The weather is the fastest killer in The Long Dark. That’s because you’ll be spending most of your time outdoors, looking for food or resources.
Hence, it’s imperative to open your inventory immediately and equip any additional clothes you have. Gloves or anything for the hands does wonders in keeping the cold at bay. You’ll often find yourself freezing to death before you actually starve, so get warm.
8 Avoid Sleeping During The Day
Another tip if you want to avoid the freezing cold is to keep yourself indoors at night. You’ll want to make that a habit. Temperatures are naturally lower when the sun’s down and you’ll only expend more resources to keep yourself warm if you do some night supply runs or hunting runs.
It’s best to do all your activities during the day and to not waste any semblance of warmth provided by daylight. Sleeping during the day is a disadvantage and is something you’ll need to avoid if you want to make it far in game modes like Survival or in harder difficulties.
7 Don’t Carry Everything
It’s easy to bring over some bad habits from other survival games that let you hoard tons of items, but The Long Dark doesn’t work like that. Items will only bog you down in The Long Dark as their weight and your character’s strength are more realistically represented.
That’s what bases are for in The Long Dark. You’ll want to only bring the most essential tools with you, such as a hatchet if you need firewood or a pry bar if you’re going on a looting run. Additionally, minimize your snacks as carrying meat with you or any food that’s not sealed is bound to attract wolvesor even bears.
6 There’s No Need To Keep Your Character Full At All Times
Speaking of food, that’s one of the most persistent problems in The Long Dark, especially since your character is always on a never-ending cycle of eating to live and living to eat. This can get rather tedious fast and you might often feel like you’re just looking for food constantly.
The best advice for this is to go a little easy on the hunger meter or ignore it. There is no dire need to keep your stomach full at all times; losing a bit of condition by starving while you’re doing your activities isn’t much of a big deal. This removes the meal-to-meal pressure of the game and lets you enjoy it more.
5 Sacrifice A Bit Of Condition
In addition to letting your character starve, you’ll want to also sacrifice a bit of your condition meter. As mentioned above, you’ll want to reserve your condition meter loss for starving. This way, you actually get to do more since you’re no longer shackled to attending to your condition meter.
Your condition recharges every time you sleep anyway, assuming you actually ate something before bed. Therein lies the efficient resource management of the game where you treat your health as a currency. There’s a limit to this, however, as you should avoid your condition becoming critically low. It’s alright to lose condition from starving or other ailments, just make sure to eat before sleeping to recover it.
4 Look For A Base Near A Lake
Another method you’ll want to practice in order to alleviate your food problems early on is by picking the most efficient food to hunt or gather. To that end, rabbits and fish are the best kinds of food.
The only resources you’ll need are simple tools or traps. So that means some of the best places to camp or turn into a makeshift base for a food stop is near a lake. This way, you have a dependable supply of fish and you don’t need to venture far for some rabbits.
3 Save Your Bullets For Predators
Hunting (other than rabbit trapping) might be another way to catch food but you’ll want to be conservative with your bullets or whatever projectile ammunition you have. A bullet wasted for a deer might eventually cost you your life when wolves or a bear starts attacking.
The best and most efficient food sources are rabbits and fish anyway and they won’t use up your bullets. You can then reserve the lead slugs for the predators in case of an emergency or if you really can’t find any clean meat.
2 Don’t Run Away From Predators
Even then, gunning down the predators isn’t exactly the best way to fight or discourage them from attacking. Fire has withstood the test of time as a deterrent and usually works on a pack of wolves, sometimes a bear if you’re bold enough.
That’s why conserving your supply of flares or even torches can go a long way in ensuring your safety. In addition to brandishing fire as a weapon, you’ll also want to keep your eyes on the predators at all times. Never turn your back away from them and then run, they have four legs, you only have two. Simple back away slowly if you’re going to retreat.
1 Prepare To Die A Lot
With that said, there’s actually no sure way to guarantee that you won’t die in The Long Dark. It’s a harsh survival game, after all, and the game will work hard on preventing you from reaching your goal, which is surviving.
That’s why you need to go in with a stoic mindset and don’t get attached to your progress or belongings. Thinks of death as an ultimate lesson here, and embrace the prospect of failure.
NEXT: Dead By Daylight: Best Items For Survival
