VIGILANT FLAME Update Now Live

Hello community,

We’ve just updated The Long Dark to v1.33, adding an entirely new wilderness Region, brand-new gameplay features, as well as numerous bug fixes in an update we’re calling VIGILANT FLAME.

For all the details, please check out this update video. Full Release Notes are available below:

New Hushed River Valley Region

Hushed River Valley is a multi-leveled Region that connects to Mountain Town, extending some of the same difficult terrain you see around the town of Milton. The new Region is full of waterfalls, rivers and streams, and lots of cliff areas, but includes no man-made shelters. It’s a highly challenging wilderness area, but keep an eye out for natural shelters, supply caches, and perhaps a mysterious Signal Fire to guide your way.

New Manual Cooking System

We’ve overhauled the cooking system so that it doesn’t occur in a simple menu interface anymore. You place cookable items in the new Recycled Can or Cooking Pot items, or on hot surfaces — namely, stones near burning campfires or on the surface of lit cook stoves — and wait for them to cook. Each food item requires a different amount of time to cook. If you remove the item too soon, it’ll be undercooked, and eating it could result in food poisoning. If you wait too long, you could overcook the item to the point where it becomes an inedible burned lump, thus wasting the valuable food and fuel resources you spent on it. You will also prepare water in a similar way. It means managing multiple timelines when cooking, but it should also free you up to take on other tasks simultaneously.

Buffer Memories

We’ve added new narrative collectibles to Survival Mode, in the form of “buffer memories”. These are the last documents stored in a computer’s memory before all the technology around Great Bear and beyond, was suddenly rendered inert by the mysterious aurora. Now, when the aurora appears at night, you might see some computer terminals display snippets of notes, emails, reports — information that provides more background on the world of The Long Dark. We’ve implemented a first series of Buffer Memories in VIGILANT FLAME, across a series of specific locations. Remember, each location may have more than one memory to offer. You can track discovered memories in the Collections section of your Survival Journal.

Radial Menu Quick Placement

As a result of our Manual Cooking work, you can now place items directly from the Radial. This means that you no longer necessarily have to go into your Pack to drop items for later placement. Radial Placement will be useful for quickly arranging various items, and is something we plan to use for more gameplay-oriented placement in the future. For now, the primary benefit is placing items from your Food radial directly on campfires or stoves, for cooking, or placing Pots and Recycled Cans on cooking surfaces so that you can cook food or melt snow for water.

General Fixes

In addition to these four main features, we’ve made dozens of bug fixes, made performance improvements across the game, and added several minutes of new ambient music to Survival Mode.

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You’ll find the full Changelist below, but to keep up to date on the latest news, be sure to also sign up to our official mailing list!

Changelist  v1.33 [37608]

General Fixes

– [All] Fixed Crows spawning below ground.

– [All] Fixed Intro Movie not respecting Master Volume settings.

– [All] Updated localization.

– [All] Fixed duplicated resolutions appearing in Options.

– [All] Fixed FOV being limited to 100.

– [UI] Fixed inventory actions becoming broken when switching between Keyboard/Mouse and Controller.

– [UI] Improved responsiveness of Resolution Selector in Options.

– [UI] Fixed Main Menu flashing briefly before intro video when running the game on Mac or in DX9 mode.

– [UI] Fixed missing Title when viewing Map Screen in Mountain Town.

– [UI] Updated Region Description formatting to be more consistent.

– [UI] Updated UI art to include Climbing Socks.

– [UI] Fixed Feat progress bars to better represent progress.

– [UI] Updated Main Menu Custom Mode text to be easier to read.

– [UI] Fixed Fish appearing with missing or bright colours when taken from a fridge and inspected.

– [UI] Fixed Earmuffs appearing on Paper Doll when equipping other Accessories.

– [UI] Moved “Sort” icon in the Inventory screen.

– [UI] Updated Clothing UI tooltips for all platforms.

– [Linux] Fixed light shaft rendering incorrectly.

– [Linux] Fixed audio not playing for some players.

– [Wintermute] Fixed checkpoint screenshot showing image from previous save.

Gameplay

– [All] Fixed momentary freeze when opening Inventory for the first time.

– [All] Fixed Light Source menu being unavailable when Flashlight is the only light source.

– [All] Scaled size of Fish to work with new cooking system.

– [All] Consolidated UI actions around a single verb – “Use”.

– [All] Updated controller actions to support new Quick Placement feature.

– [All] Fixed Aurora not always appearing correctly when player is Passing Time/Resting at specific intervals.

– [All] Updated cooking surfaces around the world for new Cooking System.

– [All] Updated Campfire placement

– [All] Fixed UI not always updating after performing an action such as Purifying water.

– [All] Fixed Clothing Screen stats not always updating after changing clothing.

– [All] Fixed Living Off the Land achievement progress being reset when drinking tea crafted from Reishi Mushrooms or Rosehips.

– [All] Fixed items falling through certain rugs.

– [All] Fixed missing audio when crafting Tinder from Sticks.

– [All] Updated instant kill regions on cliff faces to be more forgiving in some locations.

– [All] Fixed incorrect text appearing when interacting with an active Fire during windy conditions.

– [All] Updated Disclaimer screen not respecting game language when set to Dutch.

– [All] Player can no longer eat ruined food from the Inspection screen.

– [All] Fixed Weak Ice warning persisting if player loads game while standing on Weak Ice.

– [All] Fixed Bear becoming stuck in animation when not in player’s view.

– [All] Fixed player being able to become stuck when attacked while Crafting.

– [All] Fixed Campfire rewarding extra Charcoal.

– [All] Fixed extra arrow being generated after Harvesting a corpse then saving and reloading.

– [All] Realigned Wolf positioning when it feeds off a Moose carcass.

– [All] Adjusted the speed of Rifle shot sound effect when firing indoors.

– [All] Fixed unintentional movement when player is using the Radial Menu with a Controller.

– [All] Fixed misaligned blood decal after harvesting corpse.

– [All] Disabled Radial Menu while holding a stunned Rabbit.

– [All] Lantern now shows Gallons when Imperial Units are selected. Was showing Ounces previously.

– [Survival Mode] Fixed Locations Discovered in the Stats screen to account for Regions with variable number of interiors due to ruined structures.

– [Survival Mode] General fixes for a wide variety of minor locations to make them easier to Survey.

– [Survival Mode] Fixed rare scenario where WINTERMUTE map could appear in your Survival Mode map list.

– [Survival Mode] Fixed Moose getting stuck in running animation when it dies while running.

– [Survival Mode] Fixed not being able to Survey Wolf Carcasses that spawn into the game.

– [Survival Mode] Fixed arrow trails remaining after firing an Arrow in certain scenarios.

– [Survival Mode] Removed Stone Church from Faithful Cartographer requirements, as it was causing an issue with legacy game saves.

– [Survival Mode] Fixed Moose entering hold position when player is holding a light source.

– [Survival Mode] Fixed wildlife resetting location after player transitions to a new Region/interior.

– [Survival Mode] Fixed player becoming stuck when saving and loading while on stairs.

– [Survival Mode] Fixed non-interactable brush near Lonely Lighthouse.

– [Survival Mode] Improved Moose pathfinding when under trees.

– [Wintermute] Fixed player being unable to save if they delete all their Story saves, while playing Wintermute.

– [Wintermute] Fixed several locations where Bear could become stuck during Jeremiah’s Folly mission.

– [Wintermute] Fixed missing textures on Cache boxes.

– [Wintermute] Fixed controller input registering during Episode One ending, resulting in UI popup.

– [Wintermute] Autosave option now only appears when playing Wintermute.

– [Wintermute] Fixed issue where Player could not enter Hank’s Hatch during the Episode Two side mission if they unlocked the hatch, but were missing the letter.

– [Wintermute] Fixed deer carcass disappearing at the opening of Episode One if Player interacts with, saves, then reloads game.

– [ Wintermute] FIxed Cabin Fever icon appearing in Story Mode, even though the player can not get Cabin Fever in Story Mode.

– [Custom Mode] Adjusted how Wildlife Flee chance is applied.

– [Custom Mode] Adjusted loot tables.

Art/Environment

– [All] Fixed missing texture from the Burnt Flare when viewed in Inspection mode.

– [All] Fixed Smoke “glowing” at night or in fog.

– [Art] Updated Gun Rack scaling to better match Rifle size.

– [Enviro] Tweaked many item placements.

– [Enviro] Fixed numerous locations where objects clip into the environment.

– [Enviro] Polish pass on all Regions.

– [Enviro] Fixed floating snow banks.

– [Enviro] Fixed instances of bushes clipping into trees.

– [Enviro] Fixed Climbing Rope texture not appearing correctly.

– [Enviro] Fixed stretched texture on fallen tree trunk.

– [Enviro] Fixed numerous locations where players could become stuck.

– [Enviro] Updated various tree groups that were missing collision.

– [Enviro] Fixed some Ropes being difficult to interact with from the bottom.

– [Enviro] Fixed floating Rosehip bushes in Timberwolf Mountain.

– [Enviro] Fixed trees and bushes populating the same location in Desolation Point.

– [Enviro] Fixed Flag clipping into Lake Cabins.

– [Enviro] Removed extra exterior window on certain cabins.

– [Survival Mode] Fixed Moose scratch texture on trees appearing stretched.

– [Wintermute] Fixed Aurora during Episode One introduction sequence flickering at certain angles.

PS4

– Added Italian and Polish translations of all in-game text and subtitles.

– [PS4] Performance improvements.

– [PS4] Fixed several memory-related crashes.

– [PS4] Fixed button prompts flickering when tabbing between menus.

– [Xbox] Fixed flickering when bringing up the Home Panel via the Xbox button.

Xbox

– [Xbox] Performance improvements.

– [Xbox] Added Italian and Polish translations of all in-game text and subtitles.

– [Xbox] Fixed issue where conditions for Achievements could take an extended amount of time to be reported.

– [Xbox] Fixed Japanese text flickering when scrolling through certain menus.

– [Xbox] Fixed screen overlapping when signing out of profile on certain screens.

UWP

– [UWP] Fixed Launching the title in Norwegian preventing Player accessing Survival mode.

– [UWP] Fixed issue causing mouse to lose focus, resulting in game minimizing unexpectedly.

– [UWP] Fixed debug info remaining on screen after pressing F8 for a screenshot.

### END OF CHANGELIST ###