Play enough open-world games and you’re going to lose an item. You dropped your sword on the ground who knows where, and it was eaten by the gods of performance improvement. You left a pile of loot in the safe zone, but it was all gone when you returned because you dared to walk too far away. It happens, and for good reason. But isn’t it glorious when a game includes persistence with its items and loot?
Persistence is one of the unsung heroes of *The Long Dark* by Hinterland — a detail that many have taken for granted over the past 11 years, myself included. It wasn’t until recently that persistence in *The Long Dark* came to the forefront of my mind. I’ve always known it was there. I’ve always taken advantage of its presence. But I didn’t grasp the full potential of this system.
For those who aren’t familiar, *The Long Dark* features 16 regions, each big enough to eat up hours of your time. It also features several transition zones that allow players to move from one region to the next. It’s a huge world. If you wanted to walk from one corner to another, it might reasonably eat up an entire play session—weather and wildlife depending. While the size of the world is impressive, it’s also relevant to the story I’m going to tell.
You see, if you drop an item on the floor or ground in *The Long Dark*, that’s exactly where you’ll find it in the future. Whether we’re talking about an in-game day later, or 1,000 in-game days later, where you left it is where it’ll be. Stick a bear with an arrow causing it to run off and die, eventually decaying to nothing? Yup, I’ve found lost arrows in random forests from an animal I stuck who knows when. I’ve found dropped firewood, cans of food, shell casings—you name it. If you drop it or leave it, you can be confident that it will remain there for as long as your survivor lives.
Recently, while playing on a save file where I’m trying to survive for 1,000 days to unlock an achievement, I realized that I was missing two prestigious items that I usually collect: the Ballistic Vest and Warden’s Revolver, both found in the harsh Blackrock region, tucked away in its abandoned prison. Both of these items are things I like to place in my customized safehouses as decorations.
Being past Day 500 and looking to set some goals for myself, I figured I’d make the trip to Blackrock Penitentiary to collect these. When I arrived, I searched the entire prison and all its adjacent buildings. The Ballistic Vest and Warden’s Revolver were nowhere to be found—and I know where to look.
Now, in most games, not finding an item you expect to be in a specific location sends you into a panic. You think the worst. You’ve lost it, and the gods of performance improvement by any means necessary aren’t going to give it back. Persistence is not a word they use around there.
Want an example? Drop a pelt on the ground in *Red Dead Redemption 2* and walk a short distance away. It’s gone. And that’s not a knock against *RDR2*, one of my favorite games and probably one of the best games ever made. It’s just reality in the open-world genre.
But *The Long Dark* isn’t most open world games, and instead of being filled with dread that I had lost those items, I was filled with excitement and anticipation. The Ballistic Vest and Warden’s Revolver were somewhere. I’d picked them up sometime in the past 500 or so days and left them in some random spot in one of *The Long Dark*’s 16 regions, and if it took me 100 days scouring the entire world, I was going to find them.
Unfortunately, I’m too good at *The Long Dark*. I went to the game’s journal, which tracks where you have been each day, and scoured it until I found out when I previously visited the prison. Then I looked at the following days to see where I went, figuring that I might find my prizes along that path. It took me less than 48 in-game hours to locate the Ballistic Vest and Warden’s Revolver—only one region over in Timberwolf Mountain.
They weren’t even tucked into storage. I’d left them sitting out in plain view, something I can do confidently because of the game’s persistence. Part of me had hoped that I’d left them sitting on the floor of some cave in the interest of shedding some weight and it would take me weeks to find them.
Those aren’t the only items I’ve lost, though. When I returned after taking some time off from *The Long Dark*, I couldn’t find my Bunker Rifle. Now, that one is obtained only from the Trader, so there is nowhere to retrace your steps from. The journal (unless you wrote down where you left it, which I clearly should have) is of no use here. I looked for that rifle for weeks.
I contemplated “buying” a new one until I saw the price. You want four Cured Maple Saplings? In this economy? No thanks, I only have 35 spares back at the safehouse. Yes, the same safehouse where I found my Bunker Rifle. It was sitting on the gun rack.
Imagine if I agreed to a trade for a new Bunker Rifle, went to retrieve four Cured Maple Saplings, then saw my missing rifle on the gun rack in the same room? That was a close call.
*The Long Dark*’s Survival mode has always required players to be self-motivated. There are dozens of hours of optional Tales and quests you can complete in this mode, but eventually, you’ll have to find your own motivation to keep going. Avoiding death sits at the top of that list, but it’s always refreshing when emergent gameplay shows up with something you weren’t expecting.
I look forward to losing more stuff in *The Long Dark*.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/147466/lost-and-found-how-the-long-dark-uses-persistence-to-create-opportunity