The Long Dark Episode 1 Guides:
- The Long Dark – Memories Walkthrough / Episode 1 Chapter 1
- The Long Dark – The Crash Walkthrough / Episode 1 Chapter 2
- The Long Dark – The Grey Mother Walkthrough / Episode 1 Chapter 3
- The Long Dark – Paradise Lost Walkthrough / Episode 1 Chapter 4
Chapter 2: The Crash
Now we begin the game proper. Once Will finishes monologuing, you’ll get a quest to stop the bleeding in his hand. Thankfully, Will happened to be carrying a bandage around with him, so you just need to use it on his bleeding wound from either the inventory or the radial menu.
Once that’s done, Will decides it’s a great idea to try and climb out of the ravine. You know, even though he just pulled a piece of shrapnel from his hand about 5 minutes ago. You can actually skip this objective by heading to the cave right in front of where you crashed. Doing so will automatically trigger the “start fire” quest. But if you want to check the goal off, just cross this fallen tree and try to climb the ledge (Will auto-focuses on it once you get close enough).
After Will fails miserably at climbing out of the ravine, you’ll get a new objective to find some shelter. As I said earlier, the cave you want can be found right in front of where Will initially woke up. You’ll also want to pick up some sticks, firewood, and newspaper on the way there since the next quest is starting a fire. To create a campfire, go to the Campcraft option in the radial menu and then select the fire icon.
Once the fire is lit, Will decides he needs some sleep. I recommend you wait on this. If you check your stats, Will isn’t all that tired right now. Instead, spend some time making water and warming up by the fire. Once you’ve filled your water meter and gotten about 1.5 L of extra water, click on the “bed” (aka. pile of moss) and Will automatically sleeps the day away.
After waking up, Will decides he needs to try climbing out of the ravine again. I STRONGLY recommend against following the quest objective right now. Will is dehydrated, freezing, and nearly starving at this point in the game. Unless you packed the emergency food kit into the plane, you should spend some time looting the rest of the ravine. There will be a little bit of food in the metal container, and plenty of wood lying around. You may also want to re-light your fire. Cold is the biggest danger; it will kill you faster than dehydration or starvation.
Once you’re ready, go ahead and climb out of the ravine. The path ahead is linear. There will be three ledges to climb before you reach the remains of Will’s plane. Once the dialogue is finished, you get a new objective to explore the crash site. As before, you should thoroughly explore the area, picking up sticks and other items. If you packed additional supplies during Chapter 1, those will also be somewhere around here. Make sure to pick up Will’s parka, Astrid’s case, and the clothing revealed from busting up the green crate below. And don’t forget to put the clothing on!
Grab Astrid’s case, you’ll gain a new objective: to search for clues. To proceed, just get on top of the ledge via the bit of plane wreckage shown in the picture above. Will then auto-focuses on a piece of Astrid’s scarf stuck on some branches. From here, you just need to walk straight until you reach the frozen pond. There will be a burnt-out campfire that you can re-light if you need to warm up. There are also rabbits that you can stun with rocks. If you run up and catch the rabbit before the stun wears off, you get the choice to kill it. It’s not the nicest thing to watch, but when you need food…
When you’re ready to proceed, just head to the left of where you entered the frozen pond area. I’ve pointed out the direction you need to go in the picture below. The burnt-out campfire is circled in yellow for reference.
Eventually you’ll come across a wolf eating a deer.
Will makes the obvious comment that you should avoid tangling with it. Thankfully, it has lowered perception while eating the deer so just give the animal a wide berth on your way around.
As before, it’s a straight shot from here to your next objective. You’ll come across another frozen pond with rabbits and Will notes that there’s a radio tower in the distance. A radio tower means civilization…and beds. So, keep moving forward!
At least until you reach the fork in the road. As you can see in this picture, there’s a convenient sign showing which way you should be going to move the story forward.
If you turn left instead, you’ll find a cave. While it’s not too useful (no moss bed for Will to sleep in) there is a good amount of coal for you to pick up. Coal is one of the best fuel sources in the game, raising the fire temperature by 20 degrees Celsius and adding around one hour of burn time to the fire. The only downside is that a fire needs to burn for 30 minutes before you can add coal to it.
Anyways, you’ll want to climb up to the radio tower and then go past it through the gap in the rocks. Eventually you’ll see a house with the lights on and smoke coming from the chimney.
Head on inside (ignoring the blood) and talk to the woman you find there.
Well that was a nice welcome… it certainly clears up the question of the blood and dead body outside. Once the initial dialogue is done, you’ll get access to the dialogue menu above. To choose different options, just move the mouse in the direction of the prompt. The one currently selected will be highlighted. You can listen to all of them to gain more background information, but if you want to speed through just choose the ones in blue. After going through all of them, the chapter will end.