For newbies the Travois might seem like a very weird item indeed but you’ll quickly learn just how essential this piece of kit is going to be and how it completely changes the way you play the long dark. So let’s take a look at this handy little object!
Contents
Travois Explained
All credit goes to Akko Chan!
The Travois – Crafting
The ingredients to make a travois are initally relatively expensive, costing a harrowing 4 maple branches, 1 Deer hide and 2 cured guts. Obviously the biggest expense being the maple branches which become essential for late game survival to make bows. The silver lining to this is that once you build a Travois is only weighs a mere 1KG which is quite a nice trade-off considering the materials to make it weigh 2.4KG
Repairing it requires 1 cured gut and 1 deerskin taking 3 hours.
What Does It Do
Once you build it, the travois can be used to carry a whopping 75kg worth of equipment including the player characters backpack weight too. Granting a player with two moose hide satchels, a well fed bonus and a rabbit pie a grand total carrying capacity of 123KG (128KG if you find the tactical backpack too).
This staggering weight capacity makes it an essential tool for hunters, fishing over long periods, mining, smelting metal and moving your base to a new location. The trade off for this is the over encumbered penalty which reduces your movement speed by how much you have stored in it and the standard fatigue speed reduction penalty. You are also unable to attack while you are using the travois and can’t pick up any items. The travois also forces you to walk in a wide arch preventing quick movement or getaways, naturally you also can’t sprint too.
Despite the mobility draw backs it’s carrying capacity alone outweighs it’s penalties and the movement speed penalty at max capacity is barely noticeable. The travois will slowly drain as you use it so it’s strongly advised to keep it above 70% capacity (I recommend keeping it at least to 57.5KG of weight) when using it to get the most of it’s durability.
Why Use It
The long dark requires you to make multiple mini-bases to survive the easiest. Generally having 3 – 6 bases in every region with modest to high gear is strongly recommended but ensuring you keep all the bases properly supplied is a challenge and for the longest time you would find you’d use up half the resources you needed getting from base A to base B making the trip very unsustainable.
The travois changes this, allowing you to bring game, ore, metals and gear across massive distances (EG from Forlorn Muskeg all the way to Coastal Highway if you are careful). This becomes critical at bringing harder to travel with gear such as Coal, smelting hammers, toolboxes, meat and car batteries which often have to be abandoned completely due to their heavy weight. Right now I’m using the travois to go from Mystery Lake to Desolation point to make more bullets.
How to Use It
When using the travois you need to change your mindset when playing, you are no longer a lone adventurer out exploring but instead you are a caravan. You are slow, you are vulnerable to attacks and you are not in a position to freely drop it down any place and go off for a bit then come back. As a caravan you need to be taking the safest paths possible and scouting ahead frequently to check if the path is safe.
This means you need to be both the horse and the scout unfortunately. You should be clearing an area out of wolves if you have to using a rifle, bow or revolver first before proceeding since you can’t use a torch to protect yourself when mounting the travois.
Safety and Precaution
When travelling be mindful certain areas simply can’t be crossed such as the train tracks at the Ravine heading to coastal highway or anywhere requiring you to climb down a rope. In these circumstances you need to be prepared to get stuck in for a few days.
You should always carry some lumber with you, the extra weight won’t really make a difference given it’s huge carrying capacity and you will need it to start fires and set up camp at night.
In such instances you will have to unpack – repack – unpack – repack multiple times to bring everything either across the treacherous terrain or up and down the rope accordingly and this will be a slow and tedious process. However the payoff will be huge as you will be bringing essential items to a new region of the map that otherwise may not be easy to find. It’s advised you bring a Go Energy Drink or an emergency stim along with extra pies and coffee to make the situation go quicker. It’s also worth using the downtime to look over items you can leave behind on your travels such as Pre-packaged food, old clothes etc.
Also be mindful that the travois can get snagged on certain slops and bad angles, some reported glitches that their travois disappeared on hills. Another tip is you can technically cross certain tree logs on the ground at the right angle if you’re lucky which should increase travel speed.
Blizzards and Bad Weather
You do not want to be out using the travois during a storm, blizzards are dangerous enough without a 75KG pack with you too. If you suspect a blizzard is rolling through find shelter ASAP. The travois can be left where it is if needs be and you can pick up where you left off once the weather dies down, just be mindful it will slowly decay while it is deployed.
Finished
I hope this has helped you better understand the travois.
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