And now for something completely different, my gaming adventures.

In an effort to take my mind off the insanity-mode difficulty of cluster headaches, I decided to play the hardest difficulty in The Long Dark: Misery Mode. It felt a little too appropriate given that cluster headaches are, in fact, miserable. So I named my save “Misery During Misery” and set out to survive 46 days – long enough to earn the Steam achievement Broken Body, awarded for surviving long enough to receive the final affliction in Misery Mode.

It was a tall order. My previous best attempt had ended after only 22 days, and that was when I wasn’t in the middle of a cluster episode. Still, I had hope that my chaotic way of playing might carry me through. After all, if cluster headaches have proved anything, it’s that I’m somewhat capable of surviving difficult periods – so long as I’m allowed to moan loudly about having to go through it in the first place.

Misery Mode

Misery Mode is a survival mode in The Long Dark, but what makes it unique is that it comes with permanent afflictions, or penalties. These arrive over the course of 46 days – on days 1, 6, 16, 31, and 46 – and each one forces you to adapt the way you play if you want to survive.

The afflictions include Diminished Form, Haunted Mind, Frigid Bones, Rheumatic Joints, Sour Stomach, and finally Broken Body. They affect almost everything: your ability to heal (or not heal at all), damage multipliers, how easily you get warm, the likelihood of sprains from failing joints, random food poisoning even at cooking level five, and even your ability to sleep.

Basically, you just play as if your character is over 40. That might be why I was quite good at navigating it, because I am over 40.

“You now have Rheumatic Joints.” Yes, my knee is killing me.

“You now have Haunted Mind.” Yeah, that’s pretty accurate, I recently had to increase my mental health medication.

The only thing missing was random hot flushes and sudden anxiety attacks, and it would have been the full perimenopause experience. Poor Astrid.

How I Play The Long Dark

I’ve never played NOGOA (a difficult custom mode created by players), and I’ve barely played Interloper. I mostly play custom Interloper where the weather, damage, and animal settings are all on Interloper, but I add more loot and guns. I love decorating and collecting things. I will travel to the ends of Great Bear Island just to collect teddies and globes for my base, as well as, as many bottles of maple syrup as I can find, because I’ve been obsessed with the cooking system and making pancakes ever since they added recipes.

I couldn’t even resist taking the teddy from Mountain Town and carrying it with me throughout both Misery Mode runs, despite the reduced carry weight. He’s my lucky charm.

I also play very chaotically. I usually start out trying to be efficient and play “properly,” but then I get bored and mix things up by becoming completely chaotic and impulsive. My chaos includes forgetting cooking pots, my bedroll, and sometimes anything to make fire. I often have to survive without any of it, but somehow I usually manage. I’m very used to chaos.

There’s also a lot of falling through the ice in Forlorn Muskeg. I did that on my first Misery run and had to recover from hypothermia in the Bleak Inlet transition cave. Luckily Larry the bunny – who rarely spawns in that cave – was there, and he jumped all over me as I tried to sleep for hours to recover. I’m sure he was the reason I survived, because I assumed hypothermia would be run-ending on Misery Mode. That run eventually ended with a wolf many days later.

Basically, I’m a chaotic noob. A lot of people consider custom Interloper to be cheating or whatever, but I’m not a gatekeeper. Any way you want to play is completely valid. That’s one of the great things about The Long Dark. It can be a peaceful walking simulator, or complete hardship from the moment you spawn in because the game decided to spawn you next to Timberwolves and a bear. It’s completely up to you.

WHERE IS THE HACKSAW?

I did not find a hacksaw during my entire Misery run.

I’m not familiar with every single hacksaw spawn, and it’s one of the things that annoys me about The Long Dark. Finding hacksaws in places you’d reasonably expect them is apparently too obvious, so instead they appear in some completely different and slightly bizarre place every time.

Non-noob players have memorised the loot tables and know that if they find a bedroll in this very specific place, then the hacksaw will spawn in this other very specific place. There are spreadsheets with it all laid out.

I really don’t like this. Survival should be about using your instincts and adapting to what you find, not about your ability to read Google Sheets. If I were in a survival situation and needed a hacksaw, I wouldn’t avoid warehouses because “that’s too obvious.” I wouldn’t think, maybe I should check a random train tunnel instead.

After checking Pleasant Valley, Mystery Lake, and Forlorn Muskeg, I resigned myself to the fact that I simply didn’t have a hacksaw and decided to play with the loot table I had, not the one I wished I had.

I knew I should have checked Broken Railroad, but after searching every single Forlorn Muskeg hacksaw spawn because someone online claimed it was guaranteed there (obviously it isn’t), I had run out of food and was surviving on cattails.

I needed those cattails just to get back out, because I wanted to head to Mountain Town. And that’s when my entire strategy changed. I started thinking about the way I normally play The Long Dark. My main priority should be doing what I always do: hunting down pancake ingredients.

Pancakes are great. Cooked recipes almost never give food poisoning, at least in my experience. This would completely negate Sour Stomach when it appeared. You can also use maple syrup down to 5% condition and still make 100% pancakes, so there’s no need to worry about it going off.

And in Misery Mode, maple syrup spawns pretty reliably in safes.

And so, the Pancake Strategy was born.

The Pancake Strategy

I hoarded all the flour, oil, and maple syrup I could reasonably carry without becoming completely overburdened for the ropes in Mountain Town and headed there. I mostly wanted the bear, but I also knew that a lot of places in Mountain Town spawn pancake ingredients, porridge, and coffee, and there are tons of rosehips on that map for making tea and pushing my cooking skill high enough to unlock pancakes.

I searched some houses, picked up the teddy, and gathered all of my ingredients in Grey Mother’s House.

I started to get cabin fever risk before I had even finished searching all the houses, so I headed to the cave by the crashed plane from story mode. On the way there I grabbed several rabbits for dinner and hauled a ridiculous amount of reclaimed wood with me. Grey Mother’s House had very little furniture left at that point, thanks to the fact that I had thankfully found a heavy hammer.

The cave by the crashed plane isn’t warm, so I had to keep a fire going all night. Luckily, Grey Mother’s House and the other houses I had searched had given me warmer clothes and plenty of cloth to repair them.

After gathering all the rosehips and harvesting a dead deer nearby, I lit a fire in the cave and put ten hours on it. I sat there repairing clothes, preparing rosehip teas for the morning, and watching the aurora outside.

It was incredibly peaceful, which felt very strange for Misery Mode.

I ended up staying a second night because I still had plenty of wood and meat, and I had finally reached a high enough cooking skill to make pancakes. I was also enjoying the calm before everything inevitably became chaotic again.

Misery is like that. One moment you’re sailing through the game, and the next moment every single action could end your run.

After repairing all my clothes – which made absolutely no difference to the sheer coldness of Misery Mode – I headed back to search the rest of the houses. I was still hoping for a hacksaw, but unsurprisingly, I didn’t find one here either.

What I did find, however, was a huge amount of pancake ingredients. I was set for quite a while.

Unfortunately, I had spent enough time in the cave for the cougar to spawn. That meant I couldn’t search the entire map, because the Mountain Town cougar is particularly aggressive and I’ve had run-ins with him before on my custom runs. Luckily I had already searched the farmhouse he likes to prowl around.

So I packed up all the pancake ingredients I could carry and headed back to Mystery Lake.

Mystery Lake

I stayed five days in Mystery Lake. I had left deer and rabbit hides and guts curing there, so I crafted deer boots and a rabbit hat. I supplemented my pancakes with fish from the fishing hut and cleared cabin fever by sleeping there with the bedroll I’d found in Mountain Town so I could continue crafting.

Despite still not having a hacksaw, I had accumulated enough scrap metal and guts to make plenty of fishing hooks, with some metal left over.

The deer boots and rabbit hat made very little difference to the brutal cold of Misery Mode, but they did let me travel slightly further before needing another tea or emergency fire.

I cleared out the rest of the map, including the dam, which I had only passed through earlier. I found a lot of coffee, which is incredibly helpful since the fatigue meter drains so quickly on Misery. I also found even more pancake ingredients and porridge thanks to the lookout tower, Camp Office, and the safe in the dam.

At that point I decided my next destination should be Coastal Highway via the Ravine.

I was still hoping for a hacksaw, but even if I didn’t find one I could still head to Desolation Point and forge tools using the scrap metal I’d gathered. I usually use the Riken as my forge anyway – right near Danger Moose Rock. That moose has been responsible for almost every set of broken ribs my character has ever had.

Desolation Point is one of my favourite maps, despite the broken-ribs trauma my character would probably have if she remembered every run.

So I gathered my cured guts and scrap metal, immediately became overburdened again, and headed toward Coastal Highway – where the chaotic endgame, and the decisions that could end my run, would begin.

Blizzards, Boats and Bears – Oh My

I spent the rest of the run moving between Coastal Highway and Desolation Point. I still hadn’t found a hacksaw, but by this point it was too late to do anything about it. I had originally wanted to head to Timberwolf Mountain and Ash Canyon, but I wasn’t even going to attempt that without knowing I had a hacksaw first.

I passed through the transition cave into Desolation Point and collected about 30 pieces of coal from the mine, which I desperately needed for fires. With Frigid Bones, it took an absurd amount of wood to warm up, but two pieces of coal and a few sticks were much more efficient.

I headed to the lighthouse to collect more porridge and pancake ingredients, then continued on to the Riken.

While standing inside the Riken, I suddenly realised something: the scrap metal I had might be far more valuable as fishing hooks than tools. It was already too late to travel back through the maps, cut maple saplings, cure them, and make a bow using a forged hacksaw anyway.

I paused the game and thought about it for a long time. This felt like one of those decisions that could end my run later if I chose wrong. I couldn’t get any more scrap metal without a hacksaw. So how should I use what I had? Not wanting to commit yet, I went to the warehouse first, hoping a hacksaw would spawn there and make the decision for me. It didn’t.

So I decided: no tools. I would keep the hammer I had, save the coal for fires instead of wasting it in the forge, and use the scrap metal for fishing hooks. I left the Riken and headed back toward Coastal Highway, but got caught in a blizzard near the broken church. I lit a fire in the barrel there and was very grateful I had the coal to keep myself warm.

Unfortunately the blizzard lasted much longer than I expected. I used more coal than I wanted to, but eventually it cleared. I rushed through the transition cave in the dark and slept there so I wouldn’t burn through the rest of my fuel.

Back in Coastal Highway, I harvested more rabbit guts and left them curing in the Quonset garage. I also lit a series of carefully placed coal fires so I could break down all the wooden pallets around the garage for reclaimed wood to use at the fishing hut.

By this point I was running low on pancakes and porridge. It was time to fish.

What I didn’t anticipate was how difficult fishing would be on Misery. I spent an entire day fishing and only caught two small fish. I actually lost Well Fed during that attempt. Then the blizzard hit. It started just as I was about to leave the fishing hut. My fire was nearly out, I had no more wood, and I had no food left.

For a moment I genuinely thought the run was over.

I broke down every torch I had to make sticks and fed them into the fire, hoping it would last long enough. Somehow it did. When the blizzard finally ended, I left the fishing hut with no food and barely any wood and headed toward Jackrabbit Island, which I hadn’t searched yet.

On the way there I checked the shoreline for beachcombing. A whole boat had washed up. In all the time I’ve played The Long Dark, I had never seen an entire boat wash up before. I ran over to it and found fish inside. I cooked them immediately and thankfully managed to keep from starving, meaning I wouldn’t lose health when I slept.

I reached Jackrabbit Island wondering how on earth I had survived that. But things were becoming unstable. It was day 40.

I had never survived this long before, and I started wondering if I might actually make it. Every day now felt like a desperate struggle for survival. In a strange way the game began to mirror my real life – how hard it can be to manage everything when you’re dealing with cluster headaches and mental illness.

Forty days and forty nights felt a little too biblical for my liking, but I still had six days left to survive. The next morning I dismantled all the furniture in the Jackrabbit house for firewood, caught some rabbits, and slept long enough to fully restore my fatigue before heading back to the fishing hut as night fell.

Fishing overnight seemed like the safest option so I could travel during daylight. The bear that patrols the fishing huts kept forcing me to change my path, and thanks to the afflictions my sprint speed was terrible. So I tried to avoid carrying too much wood so I could still move quickly if I needed to.

The next few days were spent in a routine of fishing, gathering wood, and slowly rebuilding Well Fed. Then there was the day a blizzard blew directly into the fishing hut. I didn’t realise my fire had stopped warming me properly. By the time I noticed, I had lost a huge amount of health.

I managed to save myself just in time, but my health was now dangerously low. I had been so focused on surviving that I hadn’t even checked. I rested back at Jackrabbit Island, but with Haunted Mind I could only recover a small amount of health.

At some point I stopped keeping track of the days entirely. I was fishing when suddenly the Steam achievement notification appeared and the final affliction popped up on screen: Broken Body.

I couldn’t believe it. I had made it.

Unfortunately, Broken Body means you cannot heal at all, and my health was sitting at 17%. I stumbled back into the Jackrabbit house and slept. When I woke up it was day 47. At that point I realised I was effectively stuck there. Any damage I take now is doubled. So I decided not to end the run.

Instead, I left Astrid there – alive, but resting – knowing she had survived 47 days of Misery Mode.

I still can’t believe I made it.

I Shouldn’t Have Made It

If you watch YouTubers play Misery Mode in The Long Dark, they often say things like, “You can only play Misery Mode if you’re an advanced player who has mastered Interloper.” Supposedly you’ll struggle too much if you aren’t.

I don’t actually think that’s true.

Being a chaotic noob in Misery Mode has its advantages. Pancakes were one of them. I prioritised porridge and pancakes in the early game instead of tools. I haven’t really seen anyone else do that.

There is plenty of food on the map, and none of it needs to be hoarded for the future. You can play chaotically. There are decisions that will absolutely ruin your run later in Misery, and because of the afflictions you often can’t fix earlier mistakes. But as long as you keep making decisions and adapting, I think this mode is open to anyone.

You don’t have to play it the “correct” way. After 47 days, the only tools I had were a hammer and a prybar.

A lot of The Long Dark players also use their health bar to travel further, taking damage and then healing later. But on both of my Misery attempts I had Haunted Mind on day six, which makes it impossible to heal fully.

So from the beginning I tried to barely lose health at all: more fires, more tea, more food, more sleep. Everything takes longer when you play that way, but my health stayed full for most of the run until the endgame blizzard. It helped a lot. I only lost Well Fed once, and losing Well Fed can be catastrophic on Misery Mode. I’m still not entirely sure how I survived that moment.

Anyway, my main point is that you don’t have to be a professional player to try Misery Mode or survive 47 days. This was only my second attempt. I really shouldn’t have made it. But if I did, you probably can too.

It was still incredibly difficult – but that’s the fun of Misery Mode, unlike real life. Although having Well Fed while the rest of my body and mind felt completely broken reminded me a little too much of eating disorder recovery.

Everything is still awful, but at least I eat now.

The hardest part of Misery Mode was having to stop for cluster headache attacks. They’re so painful it sometimes feels like I shouldn’t survive those either. But somehow I do.

Sometimes gaming mirrors real life a little too closely. But at least in Misery Mode, the suffering eventually unlocks an achievement.

Here’s the soundtrack for the game. It’s really beautiful.