Moose are so rare that if you see one, you’ll be tempted to make risky decisions you would normally never consider just for a shot at its hide and a month’s worth of food.

There was the moose hunt in the middle of the night as I walked through Forlorn Muskeg. I recall living in an ice fishing hut on Mystery Lake for 19 days so I could level up my fishing skill. I remember walking into Hushed River Valley to map all the points of interest and getting lost, forced to sleep on the narrow ledge of a cliff for one hour at a time, listening to the wolves howling nearby and hoping I wouldn’t freeze to death in my sleep. This character spent 98 days living in Timberwolf Mountain, one of the most brutal regions in the game. While it’s cool to look at this investment into The Long Dark from the perspective of time, it’s the experiences that I’ll never forget. Given the fact a real hour equates to 12 hours in The Long Dark, I’m going to ballpark this save as having about 250 to 300 hours of play time, and I’m probably short on that estimate. That means this character pre-dates both the Ash Canyon region and the Blackrock region. That’s when I unlocked another achievement called Faithful Cartographer, which I know for a fact I earned on this file. The closest I can date this save’s creation is prior to October 7, 2020, but I’m not sure how much further back it goes. Heading out to the fishing huts on Mystery Lake to spend the better part of a month ice fishing. As he enjoys his final days of life before playing new content requires a fresh save, I find myself looking back on the most memorable journey I’ve ever embarked on in a video game.

I completed that trek to 500 days survived back on October 10, 2021, but that character remains alive to this day. Resources are finite, wildlife can be hostile, and the weather is so bad that keeping warm is a larger concern than running out of food or getting chomped on by a bear. That’s just shy of a year and a half of staying alive in a game where the only certainty is that you will eventually die. While players on Steam could continue their favorite saves using The Long Dark’s Time Capsule feature that allows them to play previous versions of the game, most players are likely to leave those old save files behind, myself included.Ī couple of years ago I created a custom difficulty save file for The Long Dark with the intention of surviving 500 days to unlock The Will to Live achievement. This update will include changes to how the save system works, so old save files will no longer work with the updated version of the game. On December 5, 2022, The Long Dark will launch its first expansion pass, Tales from the Far Territory, and the game will receive an update whether you choose to buy the DLC or pass on it.

The long dark save game editor