Hello Survivors,
Last week, we launched Part One of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, the first paid expansion for THE LONG DARK’s Survival Mode. TALES will be released as an Expansion Pass in 6 parts over the next 12 months. The full Expansion Pass roadmap is available
here. We also created a
Video that outlines everything that has been added in Part One.
Each Part of the Expansion will include content that is exclusive to the Paid stream, and to get that content you need to buy TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORIES.
The launch of each Part will also include Free updates to Survival Mode.
PART ONE “FORSAKEN AIRFIELD”The following paid features and content were included in PART ONE of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY:
- Far Range Branch Line. This transition region connects from Broken Railroad, linking Broken Railroad to Transfer Pass.
- Transfer Pass. This hub region provides access to Forsaken Airfield, and the two additional new Regions arriving later in the Expansion Pass campaign.
- Forsaken Airfield Region. An abandoned airfield on a vast snowy plain. It includes the Hangar, Control Tower, Ranger’s Cabin, and other points of interest. Watch for the Aurora.
- Tool Variants. Vaughan’s Rifle, Barb’s Rifle, Curator’s Rifle, Woodwright’s Bow, Spelunker’s Lantern. Modifications of the base Tools, with custom stats and cosmetics.
- Glimmer Fog. Beware this phenomenon. It comes during the day, and getting stuck in it for too long will trigger the new Insomnia Affliction.
- Insomnia Affliction. Too much time in the Glimmer Fog can affect your sleep patterns.
Please note that when you first start your adventures in the Far Territory, you cannot access the new regions or transitions from the World Map until you have first found them in the world. No shortcuts! They will become visible after they have been initially discovered.
For more details of each of these included features, please refer to the
Roadmap page.
FREE DECEMBER UPDATEAlong with the contents of Part One for the paid Expansion Pass, the following free updates were applied to the base Survival game.
- Complete Loot & Resource refresh. All loot tables have been updated, and the location of in-world spawned objects has been refreshed. The locations and amounts of all high-value Tools and Items have also been modified. Do not expect things to appear in the same place, or quantity, as you may have experienced them before, and also know that an element of randomness to loot spawns is present in any game. Interloper balance has been preserved in the loot refresh. (Additional details below.)
- Starting Spawn Points refresh. When you start a new Survival game, the locations you can potentially spawn in each region have been changed. Feel lost again.
- Visor Notes (Mementos). Notes will occasionally spawn under car visors (and other places). Finding these will unlock the location of supply caches or other items in the world.
- Improvised Crampons. You can now craft your own. Be cautious, Survivors – these Crampons are not quite as effective as the ones you find.
- Doe. Female deer have been added to the game, replacing the majority of the Stag population.
FUTURE PARTS & UPDATESEach new Part will add more items from the paid
Roadmap to the game, and each Part’s free components will be added to the existing Survival Mode game. Each Part will be accompanied by a video and notes that explain what has been added.
Before you purchase, please
read the FAQ for more information about how the Expansion Pass will work.
SPLIT & CORE GAME OVERHAULWith this release, we also rolled out a major change: splitting Story and Survival mode into separate games. This was a massive undertaking, done to ensure we can continue to update and maintain THE LONG DARK into the future.
This split also involved rebuilding many core game systems. In combination with other changes like the Resource refresh, you may find the game feels a bit different than it did. If you encounter behaviour that you feel seems very much out of character as compared to your previous experience, feel free to submit a ticket to our
Support Portal. There will be bugs, and game balance/tuning will be an ongoing effort. We appreciate your patience.
LOOT REFRESHNormally we would not get so granular in our notes, but to help understand the new “baseline”, here are some more precise details about the Loot refresh:
- The majority of container loot tables in the game have had tweaks and updates, so you will find there are new items spawning that didn't used to spawn, and some rare items are slightly rarer.
- Positions of placed gear items have been refreshed, so expect to find things in different places to before.
- Note that we do still have approximately the same amount of basic tools as before (hatchets, knives, prybars, etc), but their locations are updated.
- The quantities of plants is also unchanged (saplings, rosehips, reishi, etc).
- Weapons have had a significant rebalance – rifles are much rarer so they are no longer guaranteed in every region. Revolvers are now more common, and Distress Pistols are also found in a few more places than before.
- As has always been the case, it is important to note that most loot placements and containers have a large degree of randomness, and this does result in a significant variance of what is a “normal” amount of loot and what type of loot you get. So you can just have very lucky or very unlucky runs in the game.
- Interloper has had its loot positions refreshed and more position randomness added to its important items (like hammers) to add less predictability.
- Overall, Interloper’s difficulty should remain the same as before (if anything, it will be slightly harder given the increased randomness from the important item placements).
- On Interloper, guaranteed item spawns for items like matches have not been increased (or decreased), however, please be aware that there are random match spawns that can come from containers that might result in “lucky rolls” where you find more. This is not some thing that was changed for this update.
- If you find items that did not used to spawn an interloper in an interloper run, it is most likely a bug – we especially did not intend for weapons to spawn into interloper games (a bug we addressed in one of our earlier hotfixes).
- We have not adjusted the weather tunings for any of the Experience modes, so temperature range (which is quite broad) and temperature drop over time remain as they were before this update.
- We have intentionally removed prepper hatches for now, but they will return soon.
SAVE GAMESThe split and core game overhaul means that old Survival saves are no longer compatible with the game. They can be continued (on Steam only) using the
Time Capsule.
If you would like to benefit from the new and future free enhancements and content added to THE LONG DARK’s Survival Mode, you will need to start a new game. If you would like to play TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, you will need to start a new game.
Pre-split WINTERMUTE games should still work with the revised game.
NEW “THE LONG DARK” PRODUCT FAMILYThe split between Survival and Story has allowed us to create a new SURVIVAL EDITION product, which is a lower-cost, entry-level version of THE LONG DARK that only contains only Survival Mode.
From SURVIVAL EDITION, players can optionally upgrade to the paid Expansion Pass, TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, and/or can optionally upgrade to add the WINTERMUTE Episodes to their base game.
Each of the following games has its own in-game Home page with access to the revised in-game News system: THE LONG DARK, TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, WINTERMUTE, and SURVIVAL EDITION.
How to know which version you own:
- If you see a revised menu in-game when you start, and it says “TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY”, you have added the Expansion Pass to your game.
- If you see the Mystery Lake Trapper’s Cabin menu, and it says “DECEMBER UPDATE”, you have the base THE LONG DARK or SURVIVAL EDITION products, and you do not have the Expansion Pass.
If you owned THE LONG DARK prior to the December 5th split, you still own both Survival and WINTERMUTE, and do not need to repurchase them. You do not have to spend any more money, you still own all the things you owned before, and you will still receive future updates to WINTERMUTE Story Mode.The free updates that are part of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY will automatically be applied to our base THE LONG DARK or SURVIVAL EDITION games, for free.
The paid updates that are part of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY require you to buy the Expansion Pass.
DETAILED CHANGELISTDue to the massive overhaul to the game, it is impossible to share every individual update or change that has been made to the game over the past year of work. In addition to all the aforementioned changes, we are also calling out these
general areas of fixes and changes that we would like you to be aware of (each bullet point encompasses many individual fixes):
- Upgraded to Unity 2021.3.6f1, fixing numerous engine-side issues.
- General - Updated the game to use more asset bundles, improving load times and future update size.
- Audio - Cleaned up various audio to improve quality and consistency.
- Environment - Corrected multiple locations where the player could become stuck.
- Environment - Fixed multiple locations where items or projectiles could fall below the ground when dropped or shot.
- Environment - Fixed numerous clipping or missing texture issues.
- Environment - Fixed multiple unreachable item placements.
- UI - Ensured stats tracked the correct game values on Journal and Status screens.
- Save File - Updated the save system to better manage the size of saves, avoiding issues where saves could grow too large for safe cloud storage or become corrupted.
- Custom Game Mode - Fixed an issue where players were unable to reduce Cabin Fever Risk while Endless Night was enabled.
- Custom Game Mode - Reviewed all Custom Game Mode tuning values to ensure they are working as designed.
- WINTERMUTE - Fixed sev eral issues in Wintermute missions that could cause a Player’s mission progress to become stuck.
- WINTERMUTE - Fixed an issue that would cause the Episode Progression stat for a save to display incorrectly when viewing a Load Menu.
- Steam Deck - Optimized general performance for Steam Deck.
FURTHER INFORMATIONFor a list of Known Issues were are currently tracking, please go
here.
For all bug reports and requests for help, please use our
Support Portal.
Join the official community to participate in discussions about THE LONG DARK with fellow fans.
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mailing list.
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Prepper Bunker Overhaul - Available in Part Two of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY