The Long Dark
From the
March Developer Diary:
I like that "Signal Void" takes place specifically during the Aurora. One thing that happens in my games, almost every time, is that I end up operating entirely during the day. Going out at night is usually not worth it. The mine on Coastal Highway that you can only access during the Aurora is the only exception. Forsaken Airfield spoiler:
also the workshop in the basement of the hangar.
Hinterland Studios said:
In Survival Edition, you’ll be happy to hear we have re-enabled the hidden Prepper Bunkers. We have made some significant updates to them, both visually and in the way they spawn into the world. You will now find Prepper Bunkers in nine locations across Lower Great Bear (in appropriately remote spots, of course). However, you won’t know until you begin exploring whether the Prepper Bunker is fully-equipped… or almost entirely empty. There will only be three fully-equipped Prepper Bunkers across a single game, the location in which they spawn will change with every new game. Each full Bunker you find will also have a unique feel, and the loot inside is themed to reflect that.
When they say the new bunkers will appear in nine 'locations', I take that to mean that in every new run, 9 bunkers will spawn from among N possible spawn points. I liked that the bunkers were never in the same place, and you had to explore to find them, even if you knew where all of the potential spawn points were on a given map. Hopefully they've also expanded the number of maps that can spawn a bunker. I think it was only 2 or 3 maps before, with 1 bunker appearing on each map. If there are
nine bunkers in every new game now, I still wouldn't want more than 1 on most maps, so I hope the possible spawn points are expanded to just about every map. There are 12 major maps and 4 outdoor 'transition zones' in the basic survival game, if you don't have the
Tales expansion; 13 and 5, if you do. (I didn't count the cave-network and mine transition zones, but f it, why wouldn't you put a bunker inside a cave or a mine?) So if there are multiple potential spawn points on each map - heck, include the transition zones too, just with fewer spawn points to match their smaller size - then those 9 bunkers could be scattered truly far and wide. And if 6 of those 9 are mostly empty, basically just shelters with 1 or 2 goodies to find, then the 3 well-stocked bunkers could be just about anywhere far from 'civilization' (e.g. not near other structures). That could be fun, and it would give you a reason to explore every far corner of every new run.
EDIT: The other way to interpret this is that bunkers can now spawn from only 9 possible locations. That would be a bummer. There were many more than 9 possible spawn locations before.
EDIT 2: Up to now, bunkers spawned on 3 maps, Pleasant Valley, Mystery Lake, and Blackrock, and each map had 8-10 potential spawn points. I think I knew 7 of the spawn points on Mystery Lake, only 4 of the spawn points on Pleasant Valley, and just 1 on Blackrock. So they were tough to find, which I liked.
How's combat? How do you level? Killing stuff or doing things? Can you screenshot the skill tree? Is it like D2 in that there is one story with different difficulty levels or PoE where there is one storyline that just gets harder as you move through it.
